Michael Schumacher: From Flawed Champion to Sympathetic Figure

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: December 30, 2013

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I was never a Michael Schumacher fan. His years at Ferrari were agony for me, as he piled up titles and records at a prodigious rate.

When Fernando Alonso finally ended his run of five straight championships in 2005, I was happy. When Schumi retired after the 2006 season, I was ecstatic.

But then, in 2010, he returned to Formula One with the revived Mercedes factory team: Two German icons seeking a return to glory.

It was not to be. Schumacher's struggles, despite his obvious commitment, turned him from a flawed champion—known for his more-than-occassional, less-than-accidental clashes with his rivals—into a sympathetic, almost tragic figure. 

That tragedy was compounded and magnified with the news that the now-retired German driver suffered a serious head injury on the weekend, while skiing with his son in France.

In 2006, his final season at Ferrari, Schumacher won seven races (the same number as world champion Fernando Alonso). In 58 races with Mercedes, spanning three seasons (2010 to 2012), he only found the podium once, for a third-place finish in the 2012 European Grand Prix at Valencia.*



Before each qualifying session (and most races), when the camera would zoom in on Schumacher making his final mental preparations in the cockpit, he would invariably smile, wave and maybe blow a kiss. My daughter, born in 2009, loved it; she thought he was waving at her! Meanwhile, the likes of Alonso and Lewis Hamilton scowled and sulked in the dark corners of their garages.

I began to see that, maybe, there was something more than just a relentless driving machine behind the helmet. David Coulthard, who finished second to the German in the 2001 championship, alluded to this while speaking to BBC 5Live, per The Telegraph, that, "There are two Michaels. There was Michael on the racetrack and the Michael off it. When Michael was socialising he was a very...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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