As Spring rally took place last weekend, I had invested in the weekdays and put all my focus on what supposed to be Saturday’s article; I wanted to elaborate about the Rally winner, the car not the driver. I wanted to dedicate my weekend’s work to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X…
Until the weekend came and with it the preparation to the Australian Grand Prix. An event that millions around the globe were waiting for enthusiastically. And on a coffee break after the qualifying session, a good friend of mine asked me:” what is more important in F1, the car or the driver?” A simple question about my preferred sport, a question that I can answer by saying: the car is very important and a better car means a winning season, however the driver is the real beating heart of the car and this is why teams spent millions of dollars to get better, more experienced driver. Practically that should have been the answer but instead, I started thinking out loud and threw a list of names at him. Names that dominated the sport and made it what it is today; the highest performance sport in the world! Names that an outsider will consider to be the colorful shadows that pass on and on across the circuits.
- Schumacher in Malaysian GP
- Driving life
Naturally the first name that came up to my head is Michael Schumacher! Then I thought about Vettel, Sebastian Vettel; the new emerging talent and I said to myself:”well, yes why not!”
“Yes why not” comparing the two; although it’s a bit hard to me to me to put a young lad in the same range as my driving idol! However Spain 2010 GP is enough to point to similarities between the two drivers; as Schumacher, a 41 years old driver with a “sick” car was able to keep the previous season’s world champion Jenson Button in his superior McLaren car, behsind him with no signs of pressure! Meanwhile a team radio is sent to Vettel a baby faced 23 years old driver, telling him that he lost most of his braking power and that they don’t need a clean finish or the points and recommended that he slows down for safety reasons. But the young Formula 1 driver continued pushing even on tight corners and slowing down using down shifts on his gear box; brave or foolish? Well he’s just a good gambler and good drivers are good gambler!
Let’s abide to the chronological order of things and discuss Schumi and his techniques. He’s the driver that forced the
- Vettel- The kid who became the bull
Jordan team’s race engineer to say:” we have to change the circuit or he found a shortcut across it, he’s making times that we have never seen before!” during early testing sessions at Silverstone circuit. He’s also the same guy who overtook Alesi on a narrow chicane that nearly fits a single car in the GP of Europe 1995! And what makes his bravery uncontroversial is that if you look at any daring, tight corner overtaking maneuver, you’d see that 3 or more laps before he is practicing it. In a way he’s focused enough to race, and meanwhile clean the side of the track on which he is going to attack from!
But when it comes to footwork, and his pedal techniques, Schumacher is one of the few or maybe the unique driver to accelerate in a very frequent pulse throttling manner which enable him even in early braking situations to benefit the most of the corner and accelerate pretty early, gaining him split seconds on each turn; add these brief instants and you will end up with a large enough period to win a GP! Also when it comes to crashing this weekend and coming back in the next event with no signs of fear, he’s proved to be the best in this field and his quote after the Australian GP yesterday proves this theory’s validity until now as he stated:”… I still believe we have potential, as we saw during winter testing, and I am convinced we will fight back.”
No doubt till now numbers prove that this man is the greatest driver ever to drive F1. Till now Michael Schumacher is the “A number one” of this sport. What is happening and what happened in the present and last year’s championships is undoubtedly technical issues with the Mercedes-GP car itself along with the adaptation issue Michael is facing after a while of retirement, especially aerodynamic element control like rear and front wings and also the KERS that showed signs of failure with Schumacher and with his teammate Nico Rosberg in the Australian GP.
As for discussing the issue of the new kid, the kid that everyone is calling untouchable, invincible… I think he deserves a full session and a post exclusively dedicated to him and to his natural talent!
- Talent written all over his face
