You’ll be aware of the story by now. That almost exactly a quarter of a century ago F1 experienced a watershed.
No exaggeration. You’ll know that Michael Schumacher then made his celebrated debut in the beautiful Jordan 191 at the about as beautiful Spa circuit. That within a day he’d beaten the time of his established, experienced and not least fast (albeit wild on occasion) team mate Andrea de Cesaris by near enough a second. That he started the race from seventh, some four places and seven tenths better off than the guy across the garage mentioned. He lasted but a few seconds in the race due to a clutch failure but no matter, just about everyone had made their minds up on that opening day of running.
Almost literally overnight the grand question that had been around in F1 for years was answered – that of who would be the one from the next generation to take on the standard-bearer Ayrton Senna
Almost literally overnight the grand question that had been around in F1 for years was answered – that of who would be the one from the next generation to take on the standard-bearer Ayrton Senna, just as Senna had with Alain Prost; just as Prost had with Niki Lauda. Come the next race Michael was in a Benetton – his supposed agreement with the Jordan team wasn’t all it was cracked up to be by the Irish team. There he won the first two of his titles. And then he would not so much break F1’s all-time records as redefine them, to the point that contemporary performers barely even think about matching his marks. It’s probable too that in so doing more generally no individual ever raised the bar of what was expected of an F1 pilot as much as Michael Schumacher did. Quite the watershed, as I said.
But perhaps not even that’s the most remarkable part of this. And no, I’m not even talking about how that Jordan vacancy had opened up in the first place. A curious tale which stretched back to London’s Hyde Park Corner the previous December. When Bertrand Gachot, long before even he’d got his hands on a 191, while driving his Alfa Romeo had a slight collision with a taxi, and then having got into an altercation with the cabman took it upon himself to spray CS gas in his face. Before the Spa race a judge decided he’d do a 18 months in Brixton Prison as a consequence (although he only served a couple of months of it), for the assault as well as for the possession of the prohibited weapon.
No. Granted that bit’s unusual; perhaps even grimly amusing (though I guess not for the taxi driver). But it isn’t the really remarkable bit. No, that is that prior to Michael’s astonishing Spa debut the F1 paddock knew almost nothing about the promising talent that was ready to blow the sport’s predispositions apart. As far as they were concerned he may as well have materialised from thin air.
Schumi like a stealth bomber had somehow not shown up on F1’s radar before wreaking his immediate destruction on the sport’s cosy consensus
In F1 then as now the norm was for teams, and especially the big ones, to extend their tentacles all over the driver market and far beyond F1. All sorts of promising pilots in the lower ranks had tabs kept on them. There would be factory visits, test days, and if they were good distinct murmurings about how they’d impressed. More lately we can add specialised young driver programmes to this. And as a combined consequence almost any time a budding driver gets their freshman race weekend there is in advance at least some crystallisation of their potential around the paddock. Even Sebastian Vettel who is one it is said had a modest junior record was nevertheless part of the Red Bull and BMW programmes.
But Schumi like a stealth bomber had somehow not shown up on F1’s radar before wreaking his immediate destruction on the sport’s cosy consensus.
It’s hard to understand why this was either, as it’s not like he wasn’t doing anything to distinguish himself in the previous year or two. In 1990 he’d won the German Formula 3 title as well as two prestigious end of year international F3 races (though the first of the two, in Macau, was won amid controversy after he clashed with Mika Hakkinen on the final tour). Then for 1991 he’d joined the prestigious Mercedes squad to compete in the World Sportscar Championship. It perhaps wasn’t the most obvious move in the progression to the top of single seaters and Michael himself required a lot of persuading from his manager Willi Weber. But Merc was keen to develop young Germanic talent on their way to F1 and Weber reckoned the experience of operating in a large team would serve him well for his F1 set-up.
And it’s not as if with a roof over his head in endurance racing Schumi wasn’t standing out either. Quite on the contrary in fact as Ross Brawn, then at Jaguar which was one of Merc’s chief rivals, explains:
“The only time that the Mercedes challenged us [Jaguar] was when Michael was driving…When we prepared for the race we always had to build in a Michael factor” – Ross Brawn
“We were racing against Michael, [Heinz-Harald] Frentzen and [Karl] Wendlinger. All of them went on to race in F1. But every time Michael got in the car he was quicker and as it was a fuel economy formula, he also went further on a tank of fuel than the others, so not only was he faster but also used less fuel doing it.
“The only time that the Mercedes challenged us was when Michael was driving…When we prepared for the race we always had to build in a Michael factor”.
While journalist Quentin Spurring who’d seen all of Schumacher’s sportscar drives confided to colleagues prior to Schumi’s Spa bow: “Telling you know, that boy will be world champion”.
It’s also wasn’t like the young German wasn’t being promoted in F1 circles. Both Weber and Mercedes figures had been touting Schumi to F1 teams for much of 1991. Even Ron Dennis, who that year was on his way to leading McLaren to its fourth championship double in a row, was as per James Allen’s book on Schumacher The Edge of Greatness tipped off by the boss of AMG Domingos Piedade as to the German’s potential. But also according to Allen’s work in response there was virtually no interest, beyond a slight ripple from the ever-underwhelming Arrows squad, or rather Footwork as it was known at that point (as an aside, I strongly recommend Allen’s book if you haven’t yet read it; if there’s a more illuminating account of Schumacher’s career and ways out there then I’ve yet to come across it).
And there wasn’t even interest from Jordan either. With Gachot denied to the team for Spa the initial shortlist of potential replacements drawn up looks absurd to the contemporary eye. Keke Rosberg, Stefan Johansson, Derek Warwick. And a deal for Warwick was close, until one was finalised for Schumacher – helped by persistence from Weber and an offer of $200,000 in return for a test and a drive in the Belgian Grand Prix.
With Gachot denied to the team for Spa the initial shortlist of potential replacements drawn up looks absurd to the contemporary eye. Keke Rosberg, Stefan Johansson, Derek Warwick.
And the second part of the deal was crucial. That the selection was money motivated – rather than some grand vision of Schumi’s potential – is something admitted readily even by the boss in question Eddie Jordan, who as we know isn’t always above self-aggrandisement. Jordan’s 1991 debut campaign was impressive on track but in so doing the team had racked up debts of close to five million pounds, meaning EJ was receptive to anything that would help alleviate them (heck, he even took on woeful Yamaha engines for 1992 on the sole grounds that they were free – but more of that later).
Well, the choice was motivated by money but also nudged along by Weber being a little economical with the actualité. When asked by Jordan if Schumi ever had raced at Spa his reply was something to the effect of ‘he’s from just an hour’s drive away in Kerpen over the border!’ Technically true, but Michael had in fact never set foot on the Spa track. “If I’d known that he’d never raced at Spa it might have been a deal breaker in Stefan’s favour” said EJ some time later.
So what of the question that most F1 bosses had leap to the forefront of minds on that Belgian Grand Prix Friday in 1991 – just how did they all miss him? A lot of the explanation was that Schumi’s suspicions about choosing the World Sportscar Championship path were in fact well-founded – F1 bosses simply did not consider sportscars as a fruitful source of new F1 talent. They didn’t look; therefore they didn’t see.
As Allen explained of Dennis’s dismissal mentioned, “he believed that sportscar racers, with their emphasis on endurance rather than pure performance, were not the thoroughbreds Grand Prix racing required” (how things have changed you might be thinking). EJ concurred. “I don’t think anyone, even now, would take a driver from sportscars” he said, “so I’m not sure that Michael would have got his break into F1 without us”.
“I don’t think anyone, even now, would take a driver from sportscars, so I’m not sure that Michael would have got his break into F1 without us” – Eddie Jordan
Or perhaps, as Bernie Ecclestone commented when seeking to assist Schumi into the Benetton team in the follwoing race meeting in Monza – according to BCE with some resistance from the squad’s management – part of it was that “these people who run teams, they start to believe they’re geniuses…” Conceit is not unheard of among paddock decision-makers of course.
With all of this too it’s tempting to ask what if? What if Gachot hadn’t decided to break out the pepper spray? Or if Jordan had indeed gone with Johansson or whoever? We all know the one about sliding doors. As well as that there’s nothing evitable about F1 careers, the short and volatile things that they are.
Well, on inspection it most likely would have caused the most minor of checks on the 22 year-old Schumi’s forward momentum. At the very least you’d imagine he’d have got an F1 run with Sauber – which of course had run the Merc sportscar team and retained distinct links with the marque – when it debuted in 1993 just as his sportscar team mates Wendlinger did that season and Frentzen did a year later. And the C12 a lot like the Jordan 191 was a good upper-midfield car in which Schumi surely would have been noticed.
And at the year’s end in that strange thing called reality JJ Lehto indeed made the switch from Sauber to Benetton, and you’d imagine Schumi there would have made the stronger case for the transfer (and would you in this scenario bet all that much against Schumi claiming the 1994 world title, as he of course did in reality, nevertheless?)
Similar was likely had the Footwork interest manifested in a deal. The Footwork for 1992 was also a decent enough machine, and in it indeed the veteran Michele Alboreto was able not only to score in four races but also finish a single place out of the points – then in seventh – on no fewer than six further occasions, from 16 rounds in total. Michael you’d assume would have been a regular scorer, and again in that strange thing called reality all of the big four teams – Williams, McLaren, Benetton and Ferrari – changed at least one driver between 1992 and 1993. You’d imagine the German could have taken his pick between them.
And what if Jordan’s ‘deal’ with Schumacher spoken of at Spa, thought to apply through to the end of 1993, had in fact held? As intimated, in 1992 Schumi would have had to struggle with terrible Yamaha units, and indeed the prospect of this was a lot of the reason the Schumi camp was so keen to extricate from Jordan pronto. It would have been a tough year, but as the likes of Fernando Alonso at Minardi have shown it’s possible for a good driver to get noticed even in wretched machinery. 1993 would have been better – as with the C12 and 191 the Jordan was then a midfield car in which Michael could have easily shown his mettle. And the matter might not even have got that far, as a big team always could have bought him out of his Jordan contract ahead of time – EJ showed with Eddie Irvine a few years later that he’s not averse to that sort of deal.
But of course, bottom line, it seems near enough impossible that Michael’s stellar talent would not have been discovered eventually. F1 doesn’t always make sense, but even with that there are some things so powerful that they can’t be stopped.
