The edge of tolerance

The obvious place to start would be !@#$?@#$ !

I mean, what can you say about things that look like they have completely spiraled out of control for a team that is supposed to be representative of the greatest, most enigmatic and undoubtedly the most evocative name in automotive history?

Imagine how fucking frustrating it must be for their army of fans around the world. The Tifosi. Me. Us. Probably you. And this is before we get to the predicament of their two drivers - Mr. rapid-yet-unlucky Massa and Mr. chocobar-ze-vodka Raikkonen. How bad can things get before they start to get better?

They started out with a car that wasn’t exactly at the forefront of innovation and development. We can understand that. Seeing McLaren in the same situation, it is obvious that these 2 powerhouses who were rabidly dueling for the 2008 world championship had to let some slack as far as the development of their ‘09 machines was concerned. Their drivers, as a direct consequence have had to endure a hellish time on track trying to battle erstwhile midfield no-hopers who have ultimately ended up in front of them.

Moreover, it is really, I mean, really tough to make up lost ground in the course of a single season. Even with the mega resource strength of Ferrari (and McLaren and Renault and BMW), it will be a Herculean task for them to outperform Brawn and Red Bull, because every team on the grid is in a constant state of evolution - everybody is taking steps forward all the time. So, for every one step that the teams in front take, Ferrari and the others will have to take two steps, even three, because what they are doing has to be cumulatively greater than the developmental steps taken by the teams in front if they have to gain on them. That's difficult. Very difficult.

The sad part is, they somehow managed to make that big step forward - as was evident on the eve of the Spanish Grand Prix. They had the pace to at least stay with the front runners, if not slay them. That was a start! And then Ferrari's mechanical gremlins and slapdash errors that the crew have repeatedly been making took over. It's not just bad luck any more. It is sheer madness, and dare I say, indifference. They probably have made more tactical mistakes in the first quarter of this season than they have made in all of the last decade - the overconfident and irrational decision to keep their driver back in the pits in order to 'preserve the car and its tyres for the future runs in Q2 and Q3’ (for which they eventually failed to make the cut). Twice! It happened to Massa earlier and it happened to Kimi today. And poor Felipe didn't have enough gas to even get him to the Parc Ferme! In all probablility, the Fezza's crew has become the laughing stock of the F1 paddock. And I haven't even started talking about the mechanical failures that have now become as much a part of Ferrari as their infallible reliability once used to be.

The KERS. Again one question. Why? The teams who invested heavily in this ‘curse’ are the worst off - cases in point Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and BMW. Does the handicap of the extra weight of the system outweigh its benefits of a 90HP boost for a fixed duration of the lap? Oh yes it does. BMW and Renault decided to junk it for this particular race, because quite frankly, with the staggering performance of the KERS-free teams in the front of the pack, these four factory-backed biggies were starting to look a bit like dorks. In modern F1, I guess, the best way to find a gain in performance is to give a lot of importance to aero-development. Credit here has to go to Adrian Newey of Red Bull Racing – they still don’t have that naff double-decked diffuser, and yet they are snapping at Brawn’s heels. Plus, theirs is the only car than looks exquisite, if you exclude the snowplough in front and the scaffolding at the back. Poor Sebastian Vettel – he’d probably have challenged for the victory had Massa not held him up for almost the entire duration of the race. Thoo.

So, what’s it going to be? Ferrari seem to have found some pace, but without reliability and shabby crew-work, it doesn’t look like it’s going to improve a great deal this season.

Clearly, the Schumacher-Todt-Brawn-Byrne combine is being missed. Badly so.

Schumi : Hero or villain?

"Back in the Nineties there was a hit film called Awakenings. It starred Robert De Niro and it told the true story of a man who wakes up after being in a coma from a sleeping sickness for over 20 years. We see him rejoice as he experiences the full rush of life, but then the sickness returns. The scene where he is put back to bed, still awake, but knowing he will be returning to a sleeping prison forever is one of the most anguished you'll ever see.

And it's what sprang to mind when Schumacher gave his retirement speech at Monza. I watched this man, responsible for so many unbelievable racing moments, say his farewells, and then that kid Kubica, who'd come third, trotted out one of those inane lift- music-style speeches about his tyres being okay. I think this was the Awakenings moment for me.

Schumacher is one of that breed of super drivers that sprang up in the '80s and '90s - the Sennas, Prosts, Mansells and Piquets - who thought their own thoughts, spoke their minds and were completely in control of their own actions. When they raced they gave us the full spectrum - passion, fury, villainy, genius, mischief, balls-ups - the lot. They were showmen worth watching and now the last of that breed is about to walk away, and as a result Formula One will become more somnambulant.

It's easy to cast Schumacher as villain. Drivers such as Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart point to all his low-down unsporting moments - Adelaide '94, Jerez '97, and Monaco this year - as evidence that he can never be ranked with the great champions of the past who had much higher moral standards.

And it's true that generations ago, the racing was more gentlemanly. Moss himself threw away his one chance of being world champion because he wouldn't protest the points tally of his rival, Mike Hawthorn.

Then you had Peter Collins surrendering his car - and his own chance of a world championship - to Fangio mid-race, so that his senior teammate could win the title. They were sportsmen in the purest sense of the word, but you can't compare Schumacher's behaviour to theirs, any more than you can compare the cars of now and then.

Those drivers raced in an era that, like the telly of the time, was black and white. Appearance was everything, emotions were clamped down, and society, rather than the individual, was the dominant force in deciding peoples' conduct.

Today, though, a two-dimensional comic- book hero has no relevance in a society that is much more complex. If a hero is to be relevant, then he or she must be like us - vulnerable, bad and weak one day, virtuous and strong the next.

That is Schumacher times 10, the classic Shakespearean tragic hero, capable of super-human feats and then transgressing to the dark side when his fatal flaw gets the better of him. You can't appreciate good without knowing evil, and likewise you can't appreciate human greatness unless that human has demons to fight.

Schumacher has plummeted to the worst depths in his sport - blatant cheating - and then gathered himself up to make amends with acts of genius. I can relate to him in the same way I can relate to all the best hero-cum-villains in modern cinema. (I would have liked to change this part...It's too much)

I met once, in 2000, while filming a BBC series about the science of speed. It took half a year to negotiate an hour of his time, but the man himself was charming and even stayed for a drink after filming wrapped.

In the interview, he confessed that he believed Häkkinen to be easily as fast as him, and then we discussed the Dick Dastardly moment when he tried to punt off Jacques Villeneuve in '97. He admitted how he knew it wasn't right, but how he'd been schooled in the era when Senna rewrote the rules on racing conduct. It was a fair reply, and afterwards we asked Bernie Ecclestone for the footage of the moment when Schumacher turned in on Villeneuve.

Bernie refused, to protect Michael, but then gave us the devil's own solution: he would let us use the footage - as long as Michael gave permission in writing. Schumacher then had the final say over whether his dirtiest laundry should be aired again, and, more to the point, if he said no, nobody would ever know he'd blocked it. A day later, though, we received his written permission. I've never forgotten that.

Looking back over his career there are many amazing races that qualify him for hero status. Spain '96, when, in pouring rain, he trounced the field in a dog of a car, is one. Then there was Hungary '98, when he had to drive 20 straight qualifying-speed laps mid-race to compensate for an extra pit stop, and again won.

But the racing moment above all that makes him a hero for me is this year's(2006) Hungarian Grand Prix. In the final laps, Schumacher was third, with Alonso out of the race completely. Michael's tyres were shot to bits and it was obvious he would lose places to de la Rosa and Heidfeld. Even so, he'd still come home fifth and bag himself four valuable points, so all he had to do was let the other drivers through.

Schumacher didn't though. He fought de la Rosa and Heidfeld like a wounded wild animal and in the process shagged his car completely and came home with no points.

Schumacher still races every corner, every moment, like his life depends on it. The same passion for winning that exposes him to moments of weakness is also the very passion that makes him gamble everything, going down with all guns blazing, like he did in Hungary. That is the man I will so dearly miss."

Andy Wilman


*I haven't changed the article at all.