Michael Schumacher: what's the secret of his success?

[brg998uk]

But not good to retire as a loser.....wait and see.
He should have quit while he was ahead.

Perhaps history will place him about 6th.
Because history will take into account car development, electronics or lack of, competition, scoring system etc.

[effone]

win or loose, he prove his worth.

the name Michael Schumacher will be mention when F1 is in discussion and that defines success.

I cant believed you still doubt MS will take his 7th Title.

[kimpOy]

he had cemented himself in F1 history...

and as far as i know, the prancing horse will never stopped winning at all costssssss

[brg998uk]

I have no doubt at all, the 7th is allready won.
I meant in the all time greats list he might be 6th.
MS won his first title by skill and determination and i admire that, i even purchased a model of his bene, but not the rest of the titles.
All depends if you follow F1 for a team or an individual.

Following was found on the web, just another perspective.

With Lance Armstrong winning six Tours de France and Michael Schumacher winning six F1 World Championships, various slack-arsed journalists were making comparisons.
There was a lot of talk at the weekend about U.S. pro-cyclist Lance Armstrong. On the day of the German GP, Lance was on the verge of winning his sixth Tour de France, having made what is one of the most courageous sporting comebacks of all time.
Armstrong had made a return from testicular cancer to win the toughest physical endurance test six successive times. On the eve of the race in Germany, Lance was set to take his sixth crown. The Tour is effectively over on the Saturday before the final stage into Paris on the Sunday, because it is so flat that no team or rider would be able to break away from the all-seeing, always-attentive peloton.
At the head of the race was the man whose single-minded, almost obsessive determination had made his team the very best – Lance Armstrong.
“Remind you of someone…?” said Jim Rosenthal before the ITV programme, grinning and asking you to draw the conclusion that he was another Michael Schumacher. Later on in the programme James Allen tried it again saying that there were a lot of similarities between the two men.
Well, there are a lot similarities between President George Dubbya Bush and Lance Armstrong. They’re both stubborn Texans for a start. Armstrong and Schumacher are linked by the fact that they have six big sporting titles which they’ve won more times than anybody else.
But in sporting terms they are a long long way apart.
Schumacher is only able to show he’s good because he has the best car underneath him. Put him in a Toyota, a Jaguar, a Sauber or, this season, a Williams or a Mclaren and he’d be back in the pack.
Armstrong doesn’t rely on hardware to make him good. There is hardly a discernible difference between the bikes ridden by all 188 riders in the Tour de France peloton. Armstrong’s skill is his ability to absorb pain and push his body the furthest.
Schumacher is good at driving an F1 car very fast – we don’t really know his ability in a rally car because he thinks it’s a bit too dangerous. Armstrong is good in time trials on the flat, he’s good in mountain time trials, he’s good on flat road stages and he’s good on big mountain road stages. In this year’s Tour de France Armstrong wasn’t just good in one area and careful not to lose too much time to his rivals in others, he won all kinds of stages.
How many people are challenging Michael in every race? Well, given that nobody’s got nearly the same quality of car – and the one who has got the same car is put on a different race strategy – effectively no-one. Even if everyone had the same kind of car, the current 20 F1 drivers aren’t the top 20 drivers in the world. A lot of them have been assisted to the top because they had money at the right time. Or they’ve needed money to get them into F1.
Schumacher himself was helped by the fact that his dad owned a go-kart track. Had Rolf owned a Bier Keller F1 history could have been so different.
So whereas Michael gets to race against a very small number of talented drivers, Lance has to race against another 180 riders who all have an equal chance of beating him every time he sets out on the road.
Lance may have a strong team in U.S.Postal but his rivals are quite entitled to sit behind them and take their slipstream all the way to the finish line.
Schumacher is a very fit driver, one of the fittest. But his fitness levels pale into insignificance compared to Armstrong’s. And Lance is probably the most drug-tested athlete on the planet. He gets tested for drugs before stages and after stages. Through the course of the Tour de France he can be tested as many as 20 times.
Schumacher doesn’t have to face the constant, insidious rumours that his success is drug-fuelled. The French press have tried every tactic they can to find drugs on Armstrong, breaking into his hotel room, digging around in his bins, yet they’ve never found anything.
What’s more, the race organisers are so envious of his success that this year they devised a route they were certain would not suit his riding style. The result? The most emphatic win of his career.
Armstrong is a phenomenon. Yet he’s not the best of all time. Lance doesn’t take on nearly as many of the big races as a previous five-times winner Eddy Merckx. The Belgian, nicknamed ‘the cannibal’ because he wanted to win every race going stands at the head of everyone’s
But Merckx didn’t wake up one day and find that the cancer that had started in his testicle had spread to his chest and his brain. Doctors gave Armstrong a limited chance of survival, let alone the chance of surviving with the lung capacity to get back on a bike and resume his career as a pro-cyclist. Let alone go on to win the most gruelling test of endurance six times.

Armstrong and Schumacher? Armstrong and Niki Lauda have far more in common.
By Frank Hopkinson

[usokpower]

They say its the car.

But comparing barric and him says it all. Notice how barric tackles a corner at highspeeds. He makes minimal countersteers while MS seems to be driving with almost zero countersteer. This will save a bit of your tires and time.

I also notice sa german gp at a certain corner MS car looked very steady when he exited that corner. But the rest of the pack made a tiny bit of corrective measure.

Galing talaga its as if his car is in a roller coaster track.

Well of course the ferrari team is another factor. The car is almost perfectly balanced between power and handling. BMW may have the strongest engine on the circuit but they havent found the missing piece in the puzzle. That is balance. The pit crew is undeniably great galing ng coordination.

However, it boils down to MS. He is the one who carried the ferrari team to the championship. The only contender right now is BAR and Mclaren. I hope they can finally get the pace they are seeking. SO the race would be worth watching.

[brg998uk]

It's the car, it's the team and it is the driver.
But it is more than this, it is also about Max and Bernie's greed.
If Kimi could speak properly, would he have had penalties last year that cost him the title?
If Montoya was better behaved in front of the media would he have had penalties that cost him the title last year?

Why is MS "allowed" to drive through imaginary barriers to overtake and get away with it? Be pushed out of gravel traps etc?
Because he is the ultimate showman and fund raiser in F1 today. Just want Bernie, Max and their poodles want.

Where would Ferrari be without Brawn/Todt/$$ as well as MS? Probaly where they were a few short years ago.

After having engine failures in Malaysia why were Merc and BMW boss seemingly oblivious just an hour later on the plane? I doubt Brawn and Todt would be happily knocking back drinks an hour after an engine failure.

Where will F1 be after Concorde expires? Hopefully teams will have more influence and drivers will have to drive real cars.

[aksdman]

Hi Guys! Very interesting debate going on here!

I've been an F1 fan since the Senna days pa. Senna was my idol before. His greatest strength, as the announcers used to say was his ability to find the maximum out of his car. Even his engineers were really amazed at how he could jump out of his car and tell them what needed to be tweaked. He was the best then but he was a really arrogant SOB!

Make no mistake about it, he was a racers' racer. But the way he raced is reminiscent of Schumi in his early years. He would ram opponents left and right. He also won a Championship by ramming si Prost ata yun ( correct me if I'm wrong guys ) off the road. When they checked the telemetry, it was shown that he didn't even lift off the throttle when he slammed into Prost. He was also unremorseful about the entire incident.

Once also, he "summoned" a rookie driver - forgot who he was - and scolded him for holding him up - like what Bernoldi did to Coulthard at Monaco during 2001 ata yun. The rookie said that they were racing for position but Senna said that he "should have" let him by.

Actually, during interviews done before, drivers admitted that they tended to let Senna pass by in fear that they might get taken out of the race by a crash since Senna was known to be extremely aggressive at overtaking, always expecting the other racer to let him by.

Senna also always went to one of the best teams possible. This is a known fact as stated by F1 publications. He never brought up a struggling F1 team into a great one, though this was not his fault. This however DOES NOT diminish his place as one of the all time greats.

I first became a fan of Michael Schumacher when I first saw him race for Jordan at SPA-Francorchamps. He qualified 7th in his first race as an F1 Driver. Even before then, the announcers were saying that this kid was something special, something like what Kimi and Fernando are now. His raw speed was evident as well as his ability to string a series of "blinding" laps together. He was arrogant also and his overtaking maneuvers left a lot to be desired - like Senna. Parang moving chicane daw, but that was entirely legal. Ruthless, but legal.

He was also praised as being able to think up strategies at the drop of a hat. One time nga, Schumi was racing with his teammate at Benetton, si Brundle ata or si Goodwin ( help me out on this guys ) and it started to rain on a part of the racetrack only. Nobody knew what the conditions were since dry at one part and wet on the other. So he made his teamate overtake him inorder for him to see the conditions of his teammates' tires. Having done so, he opted to pit and put in intermediates and promptly won the race.

He also was known as a rainmeister - again like Senna. In one of his races he was lapping 3 seconds faster in the rain than any of the drivers.

When he transferred to Ferrari , I thought that it was a dumb move since Ferrari sucked big time then. Like Toyota and Jaguar now, Ferrari had unlimited budget but no direction. Their pitstops were almost farcical in nature. One time, when MS came into the pits, a mechanic accidentally and unknowingly kicked the wheelnut inside the car while it was raised. So they lost time trying to find it and when they did replace it, they saw the tires spinning in the air since the wheelnut was holding the car up!

They also lost the championship 3 times even if they led the championship at one point in the season. Actually, Mclaren dominated the 1998 Season the same way Ferrari is dominating the Season now. During the Australian GP, the 2 Mclarens ( Mika and David ) lapped everyone except the 3rd placed Schumacher. The announcers were saying that we should be grateful for MS since if not for him, then F1 would be a no-contest since it was only MS who could consistently take the fight to Mclaren. People were saying that even in an inferior car ( as the announcers would always say ), MS was capable of being competitive with the Mclarens.

Finally, they managed to win in 2000 and the rest, as they say is history.

IN MY VIEW, MS deserves all the praise he gets. Everyone admits he is talented. Even his critics say that his talent is undisputable. Even Sir Frank Williams admits that MS is the best driver in the grid today. What also is always talked about is MS' skill outside the car. His work ethic in testing is also unmatched today as alluded upon by most if not all of the team owners. Imagine this, a Ferrari engineer one time was working overtime to fix a blown engine. At 4am in the morning, in comes MS with a cup of coffee and gives it to the engineer and asks about his wife and newly born kid. How many other drivers would do that?

He always asks for the data done by all tests even if it reaches him in the wee hours of the morning to study it. I think the only person who beats MS in the number of hours put in at work is Jean Todt who works 16 hours a day at least.

Drivers like this come once in a lifetime. He may be lacking in some areas, but in my view, he should be considered as one of the best drivers ever.

My only regret is that I never will be able to see both of my idols race against each other.

Just my .02 guys! Please feel free to correct me if some of my facts are wrong! My memory isn't quite as it used to be!

[empy]

aksdman, very interesting take on Senna and Schumacher.

it's not surprising imo that many of the all-time great competitors are seen as supremely arrogant/confident and aggressive - Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Larry Bird, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong - the list goes on and on

[effone]

aksdman - the enlighten one - i agree with M54 Powered, very interesting you got there.

[aksdman]

M54: I agree with you on your idea about Champions being arrogant. Parang King of the Hill yan eh. You have to have a supreme belief in yourself and your skills in order for you to prolong your success.

Whatever the sport is, chances are, the individuals or teams that are dominating their respective sport now are also tagged as being arrogant. Hell, look at the Lakers. Almost everyone hated them. I know I did. But I loved MJ and the Bulls before. Most of my friends hated MJ though. Dominance in anything does that.

Even Champions like Tiger Woods have a streak of arrogance in them. Tiger would always find ways to intimidate his opponents. Tiger would jingle coins or keys in his pockets right before his opponents would putt in order for them te be distracted. Swimmers like Mike Phelps spit at their opponent's lanes before the competition starts. Dale Earnhardt, one of the most popular car racers ever, earned every letter of his monicker - The Terminator - by bumping most of the racers who got in his way.

Like you said, M54, the list goes on and on. But one thing remains the same, they are all Champions in their sport.


I can sympathize with the MS haters though since when Mclaren were winning, I hated them. I did however respect their ability to win. Now that my beloved Ferrari and MS is dominating F1, the shoe is on the other foot, and hopefully, critics would see MS and Ferrari as they should be seen, as Champions. And as Martin Brundle says, Ferrari's dominance is partly the fault of the other teams as they have to work harder for them to be able to take the fight to the Scarlet Monster.

Thanks again guys!