Success or bust? The return of Michael Schumacher

When Michael Schumacher announced he would be returning to Formula One in December 2009, the motor-racing community didn’t react with quite the enthrallment that would be expected of the sport’s statistically most successful racer coming back for a final hurrah. After all, sport has seen many comebacks fail to live up to the hype. The iconic swimmer Ian Thorpe’s attempts to qualify for London 2012 spring to mind, as well as tennis legend Bjorn Borg failing to win any of his 12 matches in his 1991 comeback. Some have been more successful, like Michael Jordan returning in 1995 from an ill-fated spell in Minor League Baseball to lead the Chicago Bulls to three championships from 1996-98, and George Foreman returning after a ten-year absence from boxing to become the oldest World Heavyweight Champion in history at the tender age of 45, but what would a return hold for “Schumi”? Now that he has once again announced he will retire after the Brazilian Grand Prix in a week’s time, it seems appropriate to try and answer that very question.

Michael Schumacher is waving good-bye to Formula One once again at the end of the season

The 2010 season saw Schumacher mired in mediocrity, struggling to out-perform his team-mate Nico Rosberg. It was also the first season ever in which he had failed to finish on the podium, with a race victory, a pole position or fastest lap. Though continuing his working relationship with Ross Brawn, the technical mastermind behind his five successive titles at Ferrari from 2000-2005, the Mercedes he was in never seemed to suit his racing style. Though both cars were designed for different racers (Schumacher’s was designed initially for Jenson Button before he left for McLaren, and Rosberg’s for Rubens Barrichello who moved to Williams), Rosberg seemed to cope better with the Mercedes’ set-up, and as a result led to Schumacher finishing in 9th position in the drivers’ standings, two places behind Rosberg. His failings that year brought the first murmurs from people that he was “past it”, though former-world champion and Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso did state “he will always be super-class. If the car is right, he will be a contender that we will fear the most.”

2011 was marginally more successful for Schumacher, with strong performances including a 4th place finish at the Canadian Grand Prix and two 5th place finishes in Belgium and Italy. Also at the Japanese Grand Prix, he become the oldest driver since Jack Brabham in 1970 to lead a race, the first time he had led a lap since the same race in 2006. He ended up finishing the season in 8th place, a one place improvement on the previous year. Nevertheless, he still finished the season behind Rosberg, and there were signs that Schumacher was becoming more and more disgruntled in the sport The revelation from Brawn that there was a “break-clause” in Schumacher’s contract allowing him to walk away at the end of 2011, a year shy of the three year contract agreed, plus rumours of Mercedes trying to negotiate a contract with Red Bull Racing’s reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel for a 2012 drive, added fuel to the fire of Schumacher’s imminent departure. This never materialised though, and Schumacher added himself at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix “I have always said it’s a three-year programme, and that’s what it is”.

This season though has been somewhat of an unmitigated disaster for Schumacher. With one race left, he is lying 15th in the drivers’ standings, a whopping 50 points and seven places behind Rosberg, and over 200 points behind leader Vettel. Though this is quite clearly dreadful, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Schumacher has actually put in some of the best races of his return this year, but the luck has not fallen his way, with numerous mechanical failures and accidents leading to him retiring from seven races this season. In the first race in Australia, he was running third until a gear-box failure retired his car. The following race in Malaysia he qualified third but finished 10th after being hit from behind by Renault’s Romain Grosjean on the first lap. In China, he locked out the front-row with Rosberg, starting second, but had to retire after a mechanic failed to secure a wheel properly in the pits. Rosberg went onto win his first ever Grand Prix and Mercedes’ first since 1955. He then qualified on Pole for the first time in his comeback at Monaco, only for a gearbox change from the previous outing in Bahrain leading to a five-place grid penalty, eventually starting him sixth. Finally though he had some reward, after a chaotic European Grand Prix, a collision between Pastor Maldonado’s Williams and the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton a lap from the end meant that he overtook both, finishing in 3rd. This led to him becoming the oldest driver since Brabham to achieve a podium placed finish. That was where Schumacher’s luck deserted him completely though, and it was announced in September that he would be replaced by Hamilton, leading to him announcing his retirement in October, stating “There were times in the past few months in which I didn’t want to deal with Formula One or prepare for the next Grand Prix”.

Schumacher standing on the podium in Valencia this year. The only time he achieved a podium-place in his comeback

So what went wrong? Well at the initial age of 41, many, including motorsport legends Sir Stirling Moss and Sir Jackie Stewart, claimed that Schumacher wasn’t going to be at peak physical condition for a return to a sport that places the human body under enormous strain. This was summed up before he’d even stepped foot into a Formula One car again, as his return was actually delayed. He had initially signed up to replace a severely injured Felipe Massa at Ferrari for part of the 2009 season, but failed fitness tests due to a neck injury. Though the neck issue was resolved well enough for him to return to compete full time for Mercedes, concerns that he was just simply too old to recapture his old form of seven world title wins never went away.

The team he joined also was a shadow of its former self. The previous year they had won the driver and constructor championships, under the guise of Brawn GP, with Button and Barrichello at the wheels. But behind the scenes, the team was still reeling from parent owners Honda pulling out of the sport, leading to major cut-backs and redundancies. As a result, never, apart from at China this season, has Mercedes ever looked like challenging the front-runners (Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari), and has often spent most of its time fighting in the midfield.

So is this a real fall from grace? Andrew Benson, the BBC’s chief Formula One correspondent believes this isn’t the case. “Schumacher was one of the very greatest (drivers) there has ever been. And nothing that has happened in the past 3 years can take that away”. Though it has not been the glittering ending to the career the Schumacher envisaged, or had when he initially stepped away, his achievements on the race-track are still unparalleled. The sport will miss Schumi, but maybe this time, the feelings won’t be quite as mutual.