Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Greatness of Michael Schumacher

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The Greatness of Michael Schumacher · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  John Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept
• 0:07
  sports bike rider hailing from California.
• 0:10
  He collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and
• 0:12
  fast and not much reliable.
• 0:15
  On his show, he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new
• 0:18
  and old cars driving motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:35
  Good day.
• 0:36
  Good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:37
  It is John Summers the Motoring historian with Mark Gamy.
• 0:42
  Good evening tonight, Michael Schumacher.
• 0:45
  The greatness of Michael Schumacher.
• 0:47
  Mark, why are we, how are we qualified to talk about the
• 0:50
  greatness of Michael Schumacher?
• 0:52
  Because we watched most of his races on the couch together.
• 0:57
  We may have even dozed off and may have been alcohol.
• 1:00
  It's possible involved.
• 1:02
  Who knows?
• 1:02
  There may have even been other intoxicants involved at different times in Michael
• 1:07
  Schumacher's career, but we watched.
• 1:10
  Michael Schumacher's career.
• 1:11
  Did we not?
• 1:11
  We watched the qualifying.
• 1:13
  We begrudgingly acknowledged that as Martin Bruell said, Michael
• 1:19
  is worth half a second A lap.
• 1:21
  Yeah, we watched all of it pretty much, didn't he?
• 1:23
  So what's the earliest memory of Michael?
• 1:25
  What the earliest memory for Michael is when he got that
• 1:28
  substitute drive at Jordan in Spa?
• 1:30
  The Green seven up car?
• 1:32
  Yeah.
• 1:32
  When he first came across.
• 1:34
  What do, what do you remember?
• 1:34
  What do you remember about that drive?
• 1:36
  'cause that's my earliest, I don't remember anything about
• 1:38
  the drive, if I'm honest.
• 1:39
  I remember him qualifying it in seventh or whatever it was, and thinking that's it.
• 1:44
  He qualified, like, I don't know whether it was sixth or seventh, the
• 1:47
  Google sphere will deal with that.
• 1:49
  He qualified blindingly well and then blew the clutch up on the line and had a,
• 1:55
  I can't even remember if he did the race or if he retired right there on the ride.
• 1:58
  The point was he was faster than Doche is as a substitute.
• 2:02
  It's not surprising looking back now, but at the time people were like, oh.
• 2:06
  Oh, where he qualified on the grid was completely out of place.
• 2:09
  I was blown away by how fast he was.
• 2:12
  I was saying my earliest memory of him is reading about him when he was part
• 2:18
  of the Mercedes, like sports car team.
• 2:22
  Like group C team when he was driving for Salba.
• 2:25
  I dunno if they were salba then or if they were Mercedes, but do
• 2:27
  you remember there was schumi.
• 2:30
  Heinz, Harold Freon, who made it all the way to Formula One and who
• 2:33
  people don't talk about now, but we're actually at a reasonable formula One
• 2:36
  career, one race for Williams was in contention for a championship.
• 2:40
  Was reasonable at Jordan.
• 2:42
  Wasn't he old?
• 2:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:43
  HH Freon and the other one.
• 2:44
  One I spoke as well by cancer.
• 2:46
  Yeah.
• 2:47
  Well, Michael stole his girlfriend, didn't he?
• 2:50
  That his wife was dating Frankon before she was with Michael Carina.
• 2:55
  Is it?
• 2:55
  I don't even know her name.
• 2:57
  No idea.
• 2:57
  And the other one was Inger Carl Inger.
• 3:01
  You remember what happened to him?
• 3:02
  End of the tunnel.
• 3:03
  Out of the tunnel at Monaco into the end of the barrier.
• 3:07
  Weekend after center.
• 3:09
  It was the race meeting after center.
• 3:13
  Inger hit the end of the, you know that where Brundle had that terrible
• 3:16
  accident there not Brundle button.
• 3:20
  It's where if you've seen the movie Grand Prix, it's where the
• 3:22
  accident is there, like the Chicane.
• 3:24
  And Bandini had his moment there as well, didn't he?
• 3:27
  That was the moment that that was where Ven Leer went.
• 3:30
  Yeah.
• 3:30
  So from my earliest memory of Michael and when Michael separated
• 3:34
  himself from those other three was in that seven up Jordan at spa.
• 3:39
  And you know what a place to do it.
• 3:41
  Yeah, I mean, he was just dynamic straight arriving, wasn't he?
• 3:46
  Obviously people remember him for the time of Ferrari where most of the
• 3:49
  championships came, but obviously two of the championships didn't come from there.
• 3:53
  They came from the Benton time, which again, if you like, classic Formula One
• 3:58
  for me in the, it's the era of full on team is the way of sort of, you know.
• 4:03
  People tracking down radios that were set to transmit on their frequency,
• 4:09
  taped up in the canteen so that they can't get a radio broadcast
• 4:12
  to their cars during the race.
• 4:14
  You know, all sorts of stuff like that.
• 4:17
  Obviously your main man at Benetton who had, uh, should we say.
• 4:20
  His card marked on several occasions for some creative interpretations of rules.
• 4:27
  So let's just touch on that, right?
• 4:29
  Because this modern Formula one movie, the team manager in it, his name is
• 4:34
  Reuben, but he is basically Flavio Bri tore, with the exception of the
• 4:40
  Lewis Hamilton characters manager.
• 4:42
  He's the best character in the movie.
• 4:44
  Well, I know the villain is really good as well, but I feel like it's easy for
• 4:48
  the villain to be good in that movie.
• 4:50
  No, the, the Ruben character is Flavio Bridge, or it's this flamboyant,
• 4:54
  really well dressed, Mediterranean handsome kind of team manager.
• 4:59
  Yeah, and he was looking back, his ruthlessness matched Michael's.
• 5:04
  Ruthlessness, isn't it?
• 5:05
  Yeah.
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  They were a, a devastating partnership.
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  And the cheating.
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  Right?
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  And the cheating.
• 5:10
  Now guys, listeners, is well worth looking back on because it's like
• 5:15
  cheating, but with like 32 bit Windows, 95 kind of computers, it's really,
• 5:21
  really, really like they cheated with traction control and you could
• 5:25
  hear it, you could hear it go away from the line, but away from corners.
• 5:30
  But people still didn't quite cop onto it.
• 5:33
  But we'll move on to that because what I wanna touch on Mark is do
• 5:37
  you have any recollections of that brief period where we did actually
• 5:41
  have Senner versus Schumacher?
• 5:43
  Do you have any memories of that period at all?
• 5:46
  Not massively.
• 5:47
  I mean, because Sena for me, I, I respected Senner.
• 5:50
  I mean, how could you not?
• 5:51
  But for me, his whole sort of, you know, touched by Godness.
• 5:55
  Sort of slightly sort of religiosity in his, uh, fluff, should we say.
• 6:00
  Didn't quite sit with me having arrived sort of after, at F1, sort of after
• 6:05
  the season where it ended with him just smashing prossed off at the first quarter.
• 6:10
  And me thinking that's kind of cheaty.
• 6:12
  It's not really very sporting, is it?
• 6:15
  No.
• 6:15
  Well, I mean, no, but like, you know, ified or not for the sati
• 6:19
  out there, justified or not.
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  And, and you know, I loved Sena, but yeah, it was out of order.
• 6:24
  And this is important because sinners out of ordinance open the door to Michael's
• 6:31
  out of ordinance, in my humble opinion.
• 6:33
  Yeah, completely.
• 6:34
  And opened the, the, you know, the door to the current red ball
• 6:38
  out of ordinance, if you will.
• 6:39
  And you know, the, the recent history.
• 6:42
  The last 10 plus years certainly of Red Bulls created bullshit.
• 6:46
  If you ask me again, not as someone who follows it closely these days,
• 6:49
  but the same ruthless driver, the same ruthless team, the same
• 6:54
  disregard of actual facts for what they would prefer you to have seen.
• 6:58
  You can trace the line all the way back, but it doesn't have to be that way.
• 7:01
  And I think you can look at people like.
• 7:02
  Damon Hill and Louis Hamilton and a lot of drivers that don't do
• 7:08
  it that way, but are gentlemen.
• 7:09
  Yes.
• 7:10
  I, I quite agree.
• 7:11
  Yeah.
• 7:12
  You could absolutely also probably point, I bet you could do a spearman
• 7:15
  rank kind of distribution on those of that shit and show that you probably
• 7:19
  win if, if I had to guess about 20% more championships if you're an asshole.
• 7:23
  Yes.
• 7:24
  Yes.
• 7:25
  Well, and, and definitely, you know, they always said about Ruben's Bar
• 7:28
  that he was never nasty enough to be, uh, a really winning racing driver.
• 7:32
  And I, and I feel like there has to be part of you that is ready to do a
• 7:37
  really dirty move when it has to be.
• 7:40
  Done, which makes Damon Hill all the more awesome, by the way.
• 7:44
  Yeah.
• 7:44
  I think in period, I didn't realize how awesome he was, and nowadays
• 7:47
  people don't talk about him.
• 7:49
  Everyone's like, oh, Hackerman versus Schumacher, because
• 7:51
  everyone just thinks that the Williams was the best car, but no.
• 7:54
  Right.
• 7:54
  No.
• 7:55
  For some of that period, certainly with the Arrows, I feel like
• 7:58
  Hill was really worthwhile.
• 8:01
  You don't get championships for free.
• 8:02
  The championships, even back then, like, and obviously they're so bloated
• 8:05
  now with like 20 something races, but even then there were more races than
• 8:09
  there were back in the seventies and you know, certainly in the sixties.
• 8:12
  But you know, you have to be consistently good even in the best car.
• 8:15
  And I think you did have the best car.
• 8:16
  You don't win championships without being bloody good.
• 8:19
  So my recollection.
• 8:21
  Of the combat versus center is that they had a little bit of contact,
• 8:26
  but there was never any like wheel to wheel great battling or,
• 8:31
  or any like, anything like that.
• 8:32
  And I have a piece, I'll put a link into it, but fundamentally it is
• 8:37
  clear that Benton were cheating for those early races of the 1994 season.
• 8:46
  They were cheating in two ways in the, with the traction control, and this
• 8:50
  was my understanding is as a software program that when you turn the motor
• 8:53
  off, the chip forgets the program.
• 8:56
  That's part one.
• 8:57
  And part two was the, do you remember it was the beginning of
• 9:01
  refueling and the refueling rigs.
• 9:04
  They were standard issue from the FIA and they delivered fewer at
• 9:09
  like 10 liters a second, or I can't remember the stitches either way.
• 9:13
  They were like, add like a double seal on them and obviously you
• 9:16
  weren't meant to tamper with them.
• 9:17
  Well, my understanding is, is that Benetton tampered with them and so
• 9:21
  they flowed faster and that would explain why in a couple of races.
• 9:25
  But I think definitely the aida, the Pacific Grand Prix round,
• 9:29
  that's why Schumacher was able to leap center in the picks.
• 9:33
  Flas cheating, delivered a Michael skill.
• 9:37
  In fairness, put Sena.
• 9:38
  Oh yeah.
• 9:39
  In that position at Mila where he really felt like he had to win.
• 9:42
  He really felt like he absolutely had to win that weekend in, in
• 9:46
  Mila and Michael, features in the Sini series, but not really.
• 9:50
  He's just like in the background.
• 9:52
  The sense of the pressure building up comes like not from Michael.
• 9:56
  It came from Michael in period.
• 9:58
  In my humble opinion.
• 9:59
  Now I'm gonna say we talked about Hill there.
• 10:02
  I don't have a lot of recollections of Michael's early championships, those
• 10:07
  ones for Bennington, and that's because when Santa died, I just sort of stopped.
• 10:11
  Watching and I would say you will remember the moment where
• 10:16
  I sort of reconnected with it.
• 10:18
  It was when we were in the states, when we were here for the first time.
• 10:22
  And when we arranged to meet in Chicago bus station, didn't we?
• 10:25
  And for a hot minute there, it looked like I maybe wasn't gonna show up.
• 10:29
  And you were maybe gonna be stranded in the middle of America with no money.
• 10:33
  You had like $80 or something, didn't you?
• 10:35
  And more down to your last.
• 10:36
  $10 and I just bought a burger.
• 10:38
  I I had six bucks left when I arrived at Chicago Bus Station.
• 10:42
  I think you were two hours, 40 minutes late by confidence,
• 10:44
  you turn up eventually.
• 10:45
  I, I was, I was, I did turn up eventually and in fact, whilst I don't know why
• 10:50
  we meet, but anyway, I remember I did whilst walking a lap of the bus station
• 10:55
  waiting for you, I saw a piece of paper, like newspaper blowing down the
• 10:59
  street and it talked about Schumacher.
• 11:02
  Being champion like for the first time or the second time.
• 11:05
  I can't even remember which it was, but it talked about him being
• 11:07
  champion and I was like, oh wow.
• 11:09
  'cause I did actually watched that race in Adelaide.
• 11:12
  You know, the one where he got Underhill in a example of his dirty driving.
• 11:16
  But we're gonna talk about the greatness assuming, and then we're gonna talk
• 11:19
  about the dirty driving stuff at the end.
• 11:21
  Cool.
• 11:21
  I feel like.
• 11:23
  My first recollection of watching him race with you and us grudgingly admitting
• 11:28
  that although he was a little bit robotic and he didn't have the passion
• 11:31
  that we'd seen from like a center or a mansel, was that time with Ferrari.
• 11:36
  'cause he won those couple of championships for Bennington and
• 11:39
  then he was like, you know what?
• 11:40
  I am gonna.
• 11:41
  You know, as Luca Di Montelo says, when I joined Ferrari, she was like a great
• 11:46
  actress who was getting no scripts.
• 11:48
  This is when I saw him speak at the Stanford Business
• 11:50
  School bloody 20 years ago now.
• 11:52
  But he was like, I wanted to like bring her back.
• 11:55
  You know that, well, that's what Michael wanted to do.
• 11:57
  That's what Alonso wanted to do.
• 11:58
  That's what Vela wanted to do.
• 12:00
  That's what Hamilton wanted.
• 12:01
  Well, Michael managed it.
• 12:02
  Didn't he?
• 12:03
  Yeah, a year in 97.
• 12:05
  I remember it was a bit like watching Senna in the early years where if
• 12:08
  the circuit was an asshole circuit or if it rained or if they'd never been
• 12:13
  there, but it was some wild factor that meant it was pure driving skill.
• 12:17
  Michael would probably win, but the rest of the time he was like qualifying
• 12:21
  in the top five there and thereabouts.
• 12:23
  But do you have memories of that period?
• 12:25
  Yeah, because when he arrived, the car wasn't good enough, was it?
• 12:28
  I mean, the car was pretty poor that first year.
• 12:31
  As you say, if it rained or there was something going on, he would stand
• 12:36
  out to you and you'd be like, okay.
• 12:38
  So I mean, I've got a few like just jotted down.
• 12:40
  I did a quick deco through the careers to races that stood out for me.
• 12:44
  Obviously the first one, Spain 94 stuck in fifth gear for most of
• 12:48
  the race and finished his second, not any other gears, fifth gear
• 12:52
  the whole way round the circuit.
• 12:53
  And you second, I think you lost less than a second or that pretty decent.
• 12:57
  That was an impressive thing.
• 12:58
  Yeah.
• 12:58
  And similar to that incredible drive of CNAs at Rio, where
• 13:02
  the car's like stuck in gear.
• 13:03
  Exactly.
• 13:04
  95, the European Grand Prix, that's the three stopper.
• 13:09
  If I record Oh, no, no, that's the, the, that is one of the three stoppers,
• 13:12
  so that's not the three stopper.
• 13:13
  So three stops.
• 13:14
  European GP takes 25 seconds out of a Lacey in 15 laps and then passes
• 13:19
  him around the outside of the.
• 13:21
  Okay.
• 13:21
  I mean, that's grabbing my attention.
• 13:24
  I mean, because of course that's one of those really exciting
• 13:27
  periods where they're like, checking the seconds all the time.
• 13:30
  Now that's another half second, you know?
• 13:31
  Oh, that's a, that's 0.9 of a second.
• 13:33
  You're thinking, Jesus, what track was that at?
• 13:36
  It's the European Grand Prix, like in 95.
• 13:39
  Let me just have a quick look.
• 13:40
  It probably would've been nerve burging, wouldn't it?
• 13:42
  The lifer.
• 13:43
  It was, yeah, nerve burging.
• 13:45
  We've flipped back to his Benniton years there.
• 13:47
  Haven't, what you've correctly highlighted there is just how dominant he was.
• 13:52
  A benniton that really, he had done it all by the end of his two years there,
• 13:56
  so he was like, oh, I'll go to Ferrari.
• 13:59
  Even though he was only like 25 or something at the time when he went there.
• 14:03
  And I'm a Ferrari fan.
• 14:04
  Through those years, I've been supporting Lacey, looking out to see
• 14:07
  where Burger was coming in those, the 27 and the 28 cars, you know?
• 14:11
  And I like the guys.
• 14:12
  Yeah, Lacey was cool, you know, and he's cool.
• 14:15
  Yeah, you see him interviewed.
• 14:16
  Lacey is a cool guy.
• 14:16
  I mean, he's about two for three, but like, you know, he's a cool guy.
• 14:20
  And he was quick.
• 14:21
  You'd look for what he would do, the little laci nest.
• 14:23
  Would there be a burst?
• 14:24
  Would there be a sitin on a, a set of tires that he really
• 14:27
  liked in the race or something?
• 14:28
  And, you know, he'd put in a, a spurt and he'd do a good race.
• 14:31
  But Michael delivered that every weekend, not just a little bit here and there.
• 14:35
  Sometimes if you watch the whole race qualifying and the
• 14:38
  race, there would be something.
• 14:40
  Where you were like, ha, diggity, that was something, you know, there would
• 14:42
  always be something to me, it's like the difference between an alpha and A BMW that
• 14:46
  you wanted to like the alpha more, and sure there were some things about it that
• 14:49
  were better, but you just knew that on the rainy morning on the auto barn where you
• 14:55
  just is thrashing with rain and is that a idea that I need to break and steer?
• 14:59
  You just want the BMW in those moments.
• 15:02
  And Michael had that kind of just relent you.
• 15:06
  This is what built the team.
• 15:07
  And this is what I've got next to Ferrari is I've got Ross Braun
• 15:11
  and Rory Byrne written down.
• 15:12
  But the point is that if you are part of that team, if you lean in to Michael,
• 15:18
  what you get, he always delivers.
• 15:21
  Well, absolutely.
• 15:22
  His speed built the team, his speed, his Roboticness built team for sure.
• 15:27
  Dude.
• 15:27
  I mean like, so the other races I've got in that period, so Fain 96.
• 15:31
  His Reagan meister sort of first getting on the Glos.
• 15:35
  I think that was the first Ferrari.
• 15:36
  Ferrari win.
• 15:37
  He wins by like, he's like 45 seconds ahead, you know?
• 15:39
  Not a bit ahead.
• 15:41
  Mild.
• 15:41
  So which racks was that?
• 15:42
  Spain 96.
• 15:44
  Sure.
• 15:44
  Was it at Barcelona then, or, uh, I think it was Barona, Hungary 98.
• 15:49
  That was the one where it was to beat Hackerman.
• 15:52
  They needed to three stop.
• 15:53
  And it wasn't just a three stop.
• 15:55
  Ross Braun's, like Michael, you we're gonna give you new sets of tires, we'll
• 15:58
  get you in when we can in clear air.
• 16:00
  It needs qualifying laps, all qualifying laps.
• 16:03
  And he was just mucking metronomic, just like within a tense or two of
• 16:07
  qualifying pace all the fucking time.
• 16:10
  Let's stop and think about that because I was saying this to Wally
• 16:13
  the other day that this whole way, that modern formula one is where you
• 16:17
  know it stints and you have to like that whole way of racing was invented.
• 16:22
  By Michael and Ross Braun.
• 16:24
  That Ross Braun visualized the strategy based upon Michael's speed.
• 16:28
  And as you just said, Michael just delivered with the speed.
• 16:32
  It was really, and, and this was the thing with it, the, as a, as an Englishman
• 16:36
  and as somebody who loved the sport, you know, I, you instinctively wanted to.
• 16:39
  Bought Damon Hill in those years, and by the time he'd
• 16:42
  left Bennington was at Ferrari.
• 16:44
  You instinctively didn't wanna support him because you knew how dirty he was and
• 16:48
  he didn't have the sort of, but it's from my heart kind of passion that I saw in
• 16:53
  center, and he didn't have that for me.
• 16:55
  He was just.
• 16:56
  Did whatever was best for the team.
• 16:58
  The way I see Michael, and again, I don't know him, I, I just
• 17:01
  watched him a lot and I watched the interviews and as I say, sort of
• 17:04
  spent the whole time immersed in F1.
• 17:06
  At the time, there was no quarter, it was all in.
• 17:09
  If I'm in for this, I'm all in for this 11 tenths.
• 17:11
  Yeah.
• 17:11
  I'm like, I will pull any rug from anyone.
• 17:15
  I will do anything to get the fastest car.
• 17:17
  I will, don't get me wrong on the track, I will be peerless, you know,
• 17:20
  I will be the fastest thing out there.
• 17:23
  And don't worry about it.
• 17:24
  If it rains, I'll give you faster than everyone else.
• 17:26
  Even more.
• 17:26
  Then if there's an alternate thing, something chucked into the
• 17:29
  mix that will, you know, shake it all up, I'll max that as well.
• 17:32
  Tom Brady and the cheekiness with the ball.
• 17:36
  It so reminded me of Michael.
• 17:38
  It was like, really, you really had to do that.
• 17:42
  You really had to.
• 17:43
  I just wanna highlight, we're gonna talk about this a little bit afterwards,
• 17:47
  but the thing that really stood out for me with Micah was, do you
• 17:50
  remember when I, right at the end of.
• 17:51
  Michael's time where Alonso was coming on really strong and they changed the
• 17:57
  rules basically just to defeat Michael.
• 17:59
  And it was Monaco qualifying, you know, I'm gonna say this, you knew
• 18:03
  I was gonna say this was qualifying at Monaco where everyone knows
• 18:07
  qualifying is the most important thing.
• 18:08
  And there was a format at the time where you had to like go out and do a FS lab
• 18:12
  and there was only a tiny window and Alonso had been fastest all weekend
• 18:16
  and was gonna go out and do a FS lab.
• 18:18
  And what does Michael do?
• 18:19
  Parks it against the barrier at he, he, he outbreak himself crashed.
• 18:25
  So just so cynical and so obvious and coming on the back of the other
• 18:30
  things that he'd done in his career.
• 18:32
  It was just, oh, it embarrassed you as a Ferrari fan, I wanted the
• 18:36
  guy, I went, you know, you're like.
• 18:37
  Ferrari fan, you know, you've suffered through all the years of
• 18:40
  the being rubbish and now your team's good and it's winning all the time.
• 18:43
  And you're like, this is fine.
• 18:44
  You know, I'm happy to see pole and, and then the win each race,
• 18:47
  people are getting a bit bored of it after four and a half, five years.
• 18:50
  I understand.
• 18:51
  I was bored of losing, you know?
• 18:52
  So it's the way these things come and go.
• 18:54
  But yeah, it would, it was just one of those ones you're like, oh, for fuck sake,
• 18:58
  you know, I, you try and hide in your face as a fan, being like, oh, really?
• 19:01
  We have to do this.
• 19:04
  You know, they, before they demoted him, they had the post qualifying interview.
• 19:07
  He looked like the cat that's sitting there caught in the cream all over
• 19:11
  his face going like, uh, me like.
• 19:13
  What as to say.
• 19:14
  Yeah, because he planned it.
• 19:16
  Of course he had, I mean he was absolutely a blatant cheat alonzo's out behind
• 19:20
  him three seconds through the threat.
• 19:22
  It wasn't like he went out and, you know, the idea came to
• 19:26
  him, oh, I could just do this.
• 19:27
  And it wasn't like spontaneous.
• 19:30
  Oh, I dunno.
• 19:30
  I, I'm not sure about that.
• 19:31
  I think maybe, I think he would've gone out expecting to be faster or hoping
• 19:35
  to be, but if he wasn't on hard way round, I'm thinking, he's thinking,
• 19:39
  how do I part this in the barrier?
• 19:41
  Because that way I can, I think by, I think he, he's quick enough
• 19:44
  to process that in the lap.
• 19:46
  And that's a good point.
• 19:47
  That was the other thing about him, wasn't he?
• 19:48
  He, that he was very quick.
• 19:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:51
  At processing stuff in the race.
• 19:53
  And again, now we expect people to be able to do that.
• 19:55
  But he was the first driver who actually did that.
• 19:58
  Remember they called Prost LA professor.
• 20:00
  'cause he could actually work out his fuel stint without the
• 20:03
  team needing to radio it to him.
• 20:05
  I mean, now if Pross was the professor, you know, Alonso is.
• 20:09
  You know, Stephen Bloody hawking in comparison.
• 20:12
  Right.
• 20:12
  And And I dare say Vishen, is that more so this is what I was gonna say.
• 20:17
  We were talking about the cheaty fuel rigs.
• 20:19
  You remember what happened with those cheaty, fuel rigs, Schumacher's
• 20:23
  teammates, car caught fire.
• 20:25
  Do you remember who that was driving that car?
• 20:29
  Joss Vapper.
• 20:30
  Oh, of course.
• 20:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:32
  My own memories of Joss v. Prior to the sun were that pit lane fire,
• 20:39
  which proved the Cheaty fuel rig.
• 20:41
  Yeah.
• 20:41
  And he, he had a huge crash at the beginning of Rio, and I
• 20:45
  thought, you're a fucking idiot.
• 20:47
  And now, more recently, I'm like, you are a fucking idiot.
• 20:52
  I didn't like Christian Horner, but I really feel sufficiently passionately
• 20:57
  about I actually have time for Max.
• 21:00
  I actually have time because I've, you can't talent, you can't deny talent.
• 21:03
  It's like he's Harry Line, Michael.
• 21:05
  He will do anything to win.
• 21:06
  He's very like Michael, he just, he's very like Michael.
• 21:08
  He's intentionally fast in all circumstances, like, you
• 21:11
  know, he's just ruthless and yos is steamrolling it for him.
• 21:15
  I am doing gas carting with my boy.
• 21:18
  If you look on the website, it says the boy has to be 13, my
• 21:21
  boy's 11 and he is doing it.
• 21:23
  Now, why is that?
• 21:25
  Well, the bloke that runs it is English.
• 21:27
  We've gone out, we've done the tests.
• 21:29
  It's clear that my boy knows how to drive around the track
• 21:32
  not getting in the adult's way.
• 21:34
  When the adults come up and pass him, he moves off the racing line
• 21:37
  and waves them through and they give him a nice wave and, and go on by.
• 21:41
  He's a pleasure to be out on the track with, so why wouldn't
• 21:44
  a bloat running the series?
• 21:45
  Take my money?
• 21:46
  My kid knows how to do it.
• 21:48
  What that means is that by the time he's 15.
• 21:52
  And in the middle of the series, he's kind of before years experience.
• 21:56
  That's how you, so when you think about, we're talking about the greatness of
• 22:01
  Michael Schumacher and it's really awesome that you said that Max reminds you.
• 22:06
  'cause Max does remind, and I think it's thanks to Yos.
• 22:09
  I think Yos this line that we just talked from Sena through Michael to Red Bull now.
• 22:17
  Yeah, if I do it, it's not cheating.
• 22:19
  So that's the mo That's pretty much how it is.
• 22:21
  I've gotta say, look, shout out Orlando Norris.
• 22:24
  Congratulations.
• 22:25
  I think he's a genuinely nice bloke and he's won the championship.
• 22:28
  And that's also, yeah, I was kind of more of a pastry man myself,
• 22:30
  but I, I don't watch a race.
• 22:33
  Hey, whatever.
• 22:33
  I wouldn't have minded if he'd, if pastry had won either, you know?
• 22:36
  Um, it's a. To the big, to the spoils, et cetera.
• 22:39
  I don't have a horse in this race, but congrats.
• 22:41
  He seemed like a nice chap and it's nice to see that that sort of rewarded.
• 22:44
  So, so let's break down Michael's time at Ferrari, right?
• 22:48
  Because he went there in 97 and the car was crap.
• 22:51
  The car was good by like 98 on 99.
• 22:55
  Thanks to this dream team and this flywheel effect of Michael Ross Braun
• 23:01
  and Rory Byrne doing the engine.
• 23:03
  So that's two Englishmen.
• 23:05
  Like as English as you or I two Englishmen and a German making
• 23:10
  Ferrari greater game, I think.
• 23:12
  I think Enzo would've approved, wouldn't he?
• 23:14
  I mean, he didn't really give that much of a shit about that either, did he?
• 23:17
  Well, he always preferred not having the Italians because before the war with the
• 23:21
  fascists, if you drivers died, they were like compared to Saints and it was fine.
• 23:27
  Paul Baxter, Google up this guy, he's written some.
• 23:29
  Really interesting stuff about fascism and speed and sacrifice and the whole stuff.
• 23:36
  It's really, really awesome.
• 23:39
  After the war, it it, it was no longer cool for people to be killed
• 23:43
  in motorsport, so Ferrari was like, I. Didn't really want Italian drivers.
• 23:47
  He liked foreigners because the Italian press got less upset if it wasn't, you
• 23:52
  know, the son of Lodi being killed.
• 23:54
  If it was like E beyond being ggl, it didn't really matter so much.
• 23:58
  Yeah, that would of course be my Hawthorne oh two and oh four.
• 24:02
  Those were the years that Michael was completely dominant and made
• 24:06
  the racing completely boring.
• 24:08
  I can't remember what happened in oh three.
• 24:10
  This is Post Hacker, and see that era where Hackerman sort
• 24:13
  of took him on a little bit.
• 24:15
  There was an era for a hot minute there.
• 24:17
  Montia was sort of in the picture as well, but there was very
• 24:20
  definitely a stat ranking of 1, 2, 3.
• 24:23
  Between them and with hindsight.
• 24:25
  The racing was not as close as it had been in the years of the Big four
• 24:33
  of like center, pk, prossed, MANSEL.
• 24:36
  They were closely matched with different skills.
• 24:39
  It didn't seem that way to me in the Michael era.
• 24:41
  Now, I should say.
• 24:42
  Michael Dominance at Ferrari.
• 24:45
  Nowadays, this is typical, right?
• 24:47
  Since then, we've had vets dominance.
• 24:48
  We've got, which happens now.
• 24:50
  We add Louis Hamilton's for a little bit.
• 24:52
  It has become typical, and I think it's interesting because
• 24:55
  contemporary with Michael, there was Jimmy Johnson in nascar.
• 24:59
  Arguably Rossi in bikes, but I think less so, but even more than
• 25:04
  Humie, Sebastian Loeb in rallying.
• 25:07
  So I feel like something happened with technology.
• 25:11
  There was a critical mass with automotive technology that meant that.
• 25:15
  Even though the cars at the back of the field were like closer.
• 25:18
  So in theory it was more competitive 'cause the cars at the back were closer.
• 25:23
  In actual fact, you know, the gap between Manchester United and Charlton
• 25:27
  Athletic became a whole lot wider.
• 25:29
  So we've come somebody like Loeb or Jimmy Johnson with, you
• 25:33
  know, with Johnson, it was, was.
• 25:34
  Chad Kau, is that the, gosh, NASCAR guys will hate me, but I think
• 25:38
  that was the name of his, like Ross Braun that created the same
• 25:42
  kind of flywheel effect, you know?
• 25:44
  'cause they were the best team or the best mechanics wanted to join
• 25:47
  'cause they had the best mechanics.
• 25:48
  Their pit stops are faster 'cause their pit stops are faster.
• 25:50
  Jimmy Johnson didn't need to overdrive the car, so at the end of the race
• 25:54
  his car wasn't smashed up so he could drive through and win kind of thing.
• 25:56
  You know that it, there was that same kind of, and I feel like there was
• 25:59
  something in Motorsport at that period.
• 26:01
  At the turn of the century, which you still have now, that means that the
• 26:04
  technology just meant that a small technological gain, you could flywheel
• 26:09
  out into a really, uh, big thing.
• 26:12
  And I feel like Michael and Michael's dominance at Ferrari is symbolic of that.
• 26:17
  Yeah, and I've just thought actually it also sort of coincides with
• 26:21
  really extreme downforce, doesn't it?
• 26:23
  And it's ing up of the air and the cars behind and therefore running
• 26:27
  close to people and being able to pass become more difficult.
• 26:30
  So I guess that would feed into the same thing.
• 26:33
  'cause if you are got track position, you know, it's, it's hard to overtake.
• 26:36
  So those sort of things have been.
• 26:38
  I think for quite some time, but they've got even worse lately.
• 26:41
  It's still a modern problem in F1, not being able to follow
• 26:43
  through, not exclusive to F1.
• 26:45
  MO GP has that now since the sort of extreme arrow.
• 26:48
  You have that phantom stuff where you're hard on the brakes at the end of the
• 26:52
  know Maje straight at 225 miles an hour.
• 26:55
  You get into the slipstream with the bike in front and your bike accelerates, you
• 26:59
  are on full break, the front's bottomed out and then it starts accelerating again
• 27:03
  as you're heading towards the gravel trap.
• 27:04
  So this not being able to follow things due to Arrow is not just F1.
• 27:09
  I mean it was 75 years of Formula One at heavily this year, right?
• 27:13
  So you've a row of like four wheel one cars, and as you walk along them with
• 27:17
  your 11-year-old son, he looks at the McLaren four four, the 1988 Centene car.
• 27:22
  It was actually the.
• 27:23
  Pross car 'cause that's a better example.
• 27:25
  Pross had a very original like undamaged car that he raced most of the season.
• 27:29
  So that was the car that Mc Clara had at Pebble, I think quite rightly.
• 27:33
  Hmm.
• 27:33
  Very aerodynamically clean in comparison to even the cars of
• 27:39
  like the turn of the century.
• 27:41
  The Schumacher Ferraris and those cars are so much more aerodynamically simple
• 27:46
  than the V 10 stuff of the Vel kind of.
• 27:51
  Era.
• 27:52
  Yeah, so I think you are right.
• 27:53
  I think the big downforce is part of that.
• 27:56
  And just arrow generally being more of the thing.
• 28:02
  I mean, just a couple of other races, uh, just to mention, I guess, Malaysia 99.
• 28:07
  I remember that was the year, didn't he break his leg at cops?
• 28:10
  Atto was Silverstone, so I dunno what happened for him
• 28:14
  to slide on into the barriers.
• 28:16
  But yes, younguns at Silverstone, it was like, I mean it's 200
• 28:20
  miles an hour hangar, isn't it?
• 28:21
  You break and turn in, I don't know what speed they would go round
• 28:24
  it then, but probably, certainly more than a hundred miles an hour,
• 28:27
  probably more than 150 miles an hour.
• 28:28
  And he speared straight off into the barrels, broke his leg, didn't he?
• 28:31
  It looked like he would be out for a while and Well he, I mean, he was.
• 28:35
  But I mean a couple of months I guess.
• 28:37
  I mean, what was, he was back in Malaysia, which was back end of the season,
• 28:40
  Malaysia round every year, wasn't it?
• 28:42
  But the buzz about it at the time was, of course, is he gonna have
• 28:46
  lost any speed first major accident?
• 28:48
  Plenty of people have, have big ones and the same, you know, and not.
• 28:53
  You know, just lose a couple of tens.
• 28:54
  Nothing, you know, still epically fast, still faster than you and
• 28:57
  I'll ever dreamed to be, but they're not quite maxing it.
• 29:00
  Net net, that was total bullshit.
• 29:02
  He came back and out qualified everybody, including his teammate
• 29:05
  by over a second, like everyone.
• 29:07
  I mean, one second isn't happen nowadays and didn't happen then.
• 29:10
  So, you know, put that to bed pretty quickly.
• 29:12
  And he spent the rest of that year doing everything he could to lose races to Eddie
• 29:16
  Irvine to try and ensure Eddie Irvine won the championship unsuccessfully,
• 29:20
  as I recollect, because Eddie Irvine's never been won a championship, but I
• 29:24
  remember my, uh, I think Martin Brule saying after one of the races, well,
• 29:27
  Michael's done everything he can to lose this race and still won it because he
• 29:32
  couldn't be, he drives slow enough to hand it to Ed Irvine because of the traffic.
• 29:36
  Irvine was stuck in.
• 29:37
  That was how the end rest of that year worked out.
• 29:40
  Is it 2000 to 2005?
• 29:41
  The years of the, the sort of back to back championships?
• 29:44
  It was omic.
• 29:45
  The two I've highlighted are 2002 and 2004 because I think those ones,
• 29:50
  there was virtually no competition.
• 29:51
  And I think after that, and certainly that was the era where by that time
• 29:56
  I don't think you and I were, were watching together quite as much.
• 30:00
  But the people I was watching with.
• 30:01
  Definitely lost interest at this Michael Processional kind of thing,
• 30:06
  which interestingly has become a feature since then that you know
• 30:10
  even more than it used to be.
• 30:11
  You used to be able to take a guess that it would be one of two or three
• 30:14
  drivers, whereas now I feel like the sports evolved to a stage where
• 30:18
  you're like hoping it isn't gonna be a particular individual unless
• 30:22
  you're a supporter of that individual.
• 30:24
  It's a really strange, absolutely.
• 30:26
  I mean, it was just every weekend.
• 30:28
  Dominance.
• 30:29
  But uh, yeah, you're right.
• 30:31
  They did.
• 30:31
  I can't remember what the rules changes were, but they changed them up to be
• 30:34
  more, yeah, it was to do with, because that was the, the, do you remember
• 30:38
  that was the time, the development time and all that sort of wind tunnel
• 30:40
  time and all that sort of stuff.
• 30:41
  They started to limit, well, no, I think that was in 2008 that they did that.
• 30:45
  What I remember them doing with Michael was, do you remember that,
• 30:48
  that that was when Mitchell and were coming into the sport mm-hmm.
• 30:50
  And Bridgestone were only supplying a small number of teams.
• 30:54
  Oh yeah.
• 30:55
  And then reached a point where they were only supplying like.
• 30:58
  Ferrari and two of the back market teams, they were basically just developing tires
• 31:04
  for Michael, and it was the time where you could have compounds on the fly.
• 31:07
  So Michael could like go out, do the warmup, go out, do Friday qualy, or do
• 31:13
  Friday practice or whatever warmup, and then for Qualy on Saturday could have
• 31:17
  like a bespoke set of tires made up for those weather conditions and, and that.
• 31:23
  So it was that kind of thing.
• 31:24
  I think that they, and just for anybody that gets upset about like us sar casting
• 31:28
  aspersions at anyone for cheating, that's why I started off by saying cheating as
• 31:32
  the, the, the golden era of cheating.
• 31:34
  And it carries on.
• 31:35
  It wasn't that long ago where you remember they used to have that sort
• 31:38
  of automatic delay after the start, before the red lights go out and they
• 31:41
  can all go and it would be a varying amount of time between like one and
• 31:45
  four seconds of delay between it, the lights all being on and then going off.
• 31:48
  Yeah.
• 31:49
  Um, I, I read an article the other day, I can't remember which year it was.
• 31:52
  Teams had got wind of something in the signal that they wouldn't change the delay
• 31:55
  from the practice start to the main start, and teams worked out how to hack it.
• 31:59
  So they were just programming in like a N point, one second reaction
• 32:04
  time for their drivers and then just sending them to go immediately
• 32:08
  when they knew it was gonna go off.
• 32:09
  And the reason the FIA caught 'em.
• 32:11
  They left it on one weekend and didn't send the setting, they delayed the
• 32:15
  start about another two seconds and like nine drivers jumped the start.
• 32:23
  It's like, ma, well we don't have to look too hard to see who the cheats are, do we?
• 32:27
  So, you know, this is not a sort of, they were just took it to another level.
• 32:31
  And I thought, I, I would go surprised to say that sort of those sort of
• 32:34
  things are, again, it's a ruthless.
• 32:36
  Billion dollar sport where the money from, the advertising, the power, the
• 32:42
  intoxication, the flamboyance, the supermodels, the casinos, you know,
• 32:48
  the absolute up its own arse ness.
• 32:50
  So thing of it must be incredibly intoxicating.
• 32:53
  What a massive high you are gonna be absolutely full of yourself.
• 32:57
  You know, you are king dingling if you are, uh, you know, in that position.
• 33:00
  So it's not surprising that people will do anything to win.
• 33:03
  You know, no one gives a shit who game second and when that much
• 33:06
  money is being spent, you know, they limited the spend to something like,
• 33:10
  was it 250 million or something?
• 33:13
  Which still doesn't sound like a lot, but they, there's a one to
• 33:16
  run two cars for like 25 races.
• 33:19
  That's a shit ton of money.
• 33:21
  And that's limited, you know, and that doesn't include.
• 33:23
  Quite a lot of sunk costs that they can add to it.
• 33:25
  So there's a lot of stake.
• 33:26
  So they changed the rules to defeat him and in 2005, Alonso as
• 33:31
  the first of his championships, and then I think another in 2006.
• 33:35
  So I wanna kind of draw a line under that.
• 33:38
  Early period of Michael's career and, and I wanna highlight, I think, key strengths
• 33:45
  that people should take away, right?
• 33:46
  The first is that sheer speed brundle and the half a second el lap.
• 33:50
  And the fact that that worked all sorts of different ways.
• 33:53
  'cause it was like free horsepower.
• 33:55
  You could like add downforce, you could do a different fit strategy.
• 33:58
  It just opened so many doors.
• 34:01
  The strategy, which is sort of bolted onto that, that has become a feature of
• 34:06
  the sport now, is that you use pit stop strategy to give you an advantage or you
• 34:11
  hold a teammate back by pitting late or something like that for all the speed.
• 34:16
  Michael wasn't like Vel was where he had the speed, but if like, you
• 34:21
  know, if a sheep farted that morning or if he didn't have his breakfast,
• 34:25
  just the way he liked it, he couldn't do, Michael wasn't like that.
• 34:28
  Michael could tiger.
• 34:29
  Not always, but Michael could tiger from the back when he needed to.
• 34:34
  And he was great when conditions were uncertain.
• 34:37
  He was awesome, not just in the rain.
• 34:39
  The other thing he was, uh, really good at was he learned
• 34:42
  the circuit really, really fast.
• 34:44
  And another Brundle story that I always remember about him was talking
• 34:48
  about how Brun had been a Barcelona or Silverstone, but either way, he'd
• 34:52
  been there for like a day and a half.
• 34:53
  With the team testing, Michael flies in.
• 34:56
  'cause Bru and Michael were teammates at Bennington, weren't they?
• 34:59
  I think in 19, anyway, Michael flies in and his second lap out is faster
• 35:05
  than anything Martin has done so far this weekend and you're just like, oh.
• 35:10
  Because the psychological effect of that was huge, right?
• 35:16
  The It could not be.
• 35:17
  The focus on me, we've just talked about.
• 35:19
  So speed strategy, racecraft, the focus on me, this is what made him stand out.
• 35:26
  But also I've got him here as the classic German baddie that was
• 35:30
  the head in that, that I gave.
• 35:32
  And you know that movie that we've enjoyed.
• 35:34
  We've enjoyed the novel as well, the prisoner of Zender.
• 35:37
  James Mason, who's as English or as American as they
• 35:40
  come, is the German villain.
• 35:41
  And do you remember right at the end he's acting like he acts like a gentleman,
• 35:44
  but then right at the end he turns into a dirty bastard right at the end, just
• 35:49
  like Michael would like right at the end.
• 35:51
  He would like turn, like, I feel like he had those kind of quality, uh, about him.
• 35:58
  We've talked about those kind of things a lot.
• 36:01
  Let's reflect on that.
• 36:02
  How much does that compromise his legacy mark?
• 36:05
  The fact that he was a bit dirty, especially in comparison
• 36:08
  to a gentleman like Hill.
• 36:11
  I mean, it's complicated, isn't it?
• 36:13
  Yeah.
• 36:13
  'cause I mean, the elephant in the room is that the guy's a vegetable.
• 36:16
  Well, let's talk about that phase now, because the reason I wanted to draw
• 36:20
  this line in the sand is the guy who raced for Mercedes seems to me was
• 36:25
  not remotely the same person who raced for Benton or Ferrari, not remotely.
• 36:30
  He still had flashes here and there, and it was a shame, I think, some
• 36:33
  of the way It turned out that he nearly won a race at the end for
• 36:35
  Mercedes, and by rights he should have done a bit of a bad turn for him.
• 36:38
  I think.
• 36:39
  Was it Canada?
• 36:39
  I can't remember exactly where.
• 36:41
  He did have that qualifying a Monaco in the Mercedes where he put it on pole.
• 36:44
  I think he had a five second something else, a grid place drop for a clutch or
• 36:49
  a gearbox or something like that change.
• 36:51
  Although he got it, it was immediately demoted, but still a
• 36:54
  nice sort of swan song for him.
• 36:55
  But I meant sort of just, I didn't mean to, you know, vegetables a bit unkind.
• 36:58
  You know, he obviously he is an in, he's alive, you know, he's well with us, but
• 37:01
  he now can't speak for himself because of the awful accident with the skiing.
• 37:05
  Which as I understand, I dunno if this is true, he was wearing a GoPro on
• 37:08
  his helmet and was doing like black runs on a snowboard or something,
• 37:13
  like fell off, hit a tree and the GoPro went through his helmet.
• 37:15
  That was my understanding.
• 37:16
  So may not be true, but he certainly had a bad, very bad accident.
• 37:19
  You know, he's around but he can't speak for himself.
• 37:22
  And I think, you know, you therefore wanna be ultra careful
• 37:24
  as to what you say about somebody.
• 37:25
  'cause you know, he's there to defend himself, but he is not
• 37:27
  really there to defend himself.
• 37:29
  Not that he's ever gonna hear this, even if he were.
• 37:32
  Don't give a shit.
• 37:33
  You're saying that we need to be careful about what we say when I
• 37:35
  call him a classic German badie and you call him a vegetable.
• 37:39
  Well, yeah, I, I wanna be clear.
• 37:41
  Vegetable's totally unfair.
• 37:42
  I'm just a bit tired, you know?
• 37:43
  I dunno if he's a paraplegic now, but I mean, he's clearly not the man.
• 37:46
  He, well, we don't know, do we that?
• 37:47
  No, we know he's all lockdown.
• 37:50
  Money buys you privacy.
• 37:52
  Doesn't it?
• 37:52
  You know that amount of money buys you radio service, but this is the third thing
• 37:56
  is that he was lucky in period, right?
• 37:59
  When in the Ferrari years, how many times did Ruben's bar's car
• 38:03
  break down whilst Michael's didn't?
• 38:06
  At least half a dozen races.
• 38:08
  Over the years where you were just like, wow.
• 38:11
  He was lucky with that.
• 38:12
  There were a lot of things that he was lucky with.
• 38:14
  And then the Mercedes years, I felt like he was a shadow of who he was.
• 38:18
  He was a different person.
• 38:19
  And I've jotted down here in comparison with Nikki Lauder's
• 38:23
  return, and I really feel like.
• 38:25
  Only louder has ever made coming out of retirement work.
• 38:29
  I can't think of somebody else who's come outta retirement and
• 38:32
  alongside the only other one.
• 38:33
  Not that he's won that much.
• 38:35
  He came back and, uh, about two thirds of the way through the first year when
• 38:38
  he came back, having done like WEC sports cars and stuff and won 'em on that.
• 38:42
  And failed to win the Indy 500 of course, but shaping up, uh, you
• 38:46
  know, it's a bit of a lottery, like motor sport and the car died.
• 38:49
  But yeah, he came back and was competitive.
• 38:51
  They asked him about two thirds of the way through the first year,
• 38:53
  what's the problem, Fernando?
• 38:54
  He said, me, I'm too slow.
• 38:56
  And was by the next year, again, back to ruining other careers of
• 39:00
  younger people who come up thinking this old geezer can't drive anymore.
• 39:04
  Actually, he's super sharp, he's really fast, and oh fuck, he's beating me again.
• 39:08
  And it's 16 one in qualifying.
• 39:10
  But if we go back onto Michael, there's a bunch of things to say about Michael.
• 39:13
  I mean, he's a really complicated story because the, the speed is undeniable.
• 39:17
  And even if you are an Uber fan, and I was never an Uber fan, I was
• 39:19
  just a Ferrari fan, and oh wow, you know, this guy's turned up and
• 39:22
  he's winning in your favorite car.
• 39:23
  Great.
• 39:24
  This is awesome.
• 39:24
  Unless you've got no empathy, people like Reuben's, barric color,
• 39:27
  they're driving the Ferrari as well.
• 39:29
  And he's a cool guy.
• 39:30
  And when he wins, it's really great.
• 39:31
  And you know, you like the guy and then Michael puts him in
• 39:33
  the wall and you're like, what?
• 39:34
  What?
• 39:35
  Why?
• 39:35
  Why did, why did you do that, Michael?
• 39:37
  You didn't need to do that.
• 39:38
  They would've team orders him behind you, dude.
• 39:40
  Like, you know, you didn't need to put him in the barrier or in the,
• 39:42
  into the, into this gravel trap.
• 39:44
  And he would just do that shit.
• 39:46
  That would just happen, you know, it would be the ruthless move.
• 39:48
  So that happened all the way through his career.
• 39:50
  So by the end of it, you're like, you know, I know there's
• 39:53
  been this amazing success, but.
• 39:55
  You sort of feel like slightly soiled by the association.
• 39:58
  You know, it just takes the luster off, you know?
• 40:00
  And the Brady examples get interesting.
• 40:02
  And again, any Patriots band would be hating you for the
• 40:04
  inflate gate references and stuff.
• 40:06
  But the fact is, like it or not, the Patriots lost draft
• 40:09
  picks twice for scandals.
• 40:12
  Shall we just leave it at that?
• 40:13
  But again, it's the same sort of thing.
• 40:15
  It's, you know, bill Belichick was a master in rule book exploitation.
• 40:19
  Flavio, Bri, Tori, the same.
• 40:20
  If you want a sort of a more noble example, greatest
• 40:23
  designer of um, uh, not Adrian.
• 40:25
  Adrian, Adrian Newy.
• 40:26
  Yeah.
• 40:26
  Greatest designer in F1.
• 40:28
  Full stop.
• 40:28
  He was the genius still, uh, finding aerodynamic loopholes and how to
• 40:34
  make it the best out of a blank piece of canvas with an increasingly
• 40:37
  sort of reduced parameters.
• 40:38
  Michael would do that in every way if he needed to block you
• 40:41
  in qualifying my teammate.
• 40:43
  To get his lap in.
• 40:44
  He would do that shit, you know, without thinking about it.
• 40:47
  And then bare face lie about it afterwards, you know, smiling
• 40:50
  quite charmingly like, no, no, no.
• 40:52
  He said he was arrogant, didn't they?
• 40:54
  At the time.
• 40:55
  And I always felt arrogance was only overestimation of who you were.
• 40:59
  Anything Michael said was probably true.
• 41:03
  It might come across as arrogant, but it was, I mean, he was the best
• 41:07
  and he thought he was the best and he was the best for quite a long period.
• 41:10
  You know, that's like the Acura, you know, when Rossi went for from, was it
• 41:14
  Honda to Yamaha, and then won the first race on the Yamaha in South Africa and
• 41:18
  won the championship that year on the Yamaha, on basically what hadn't been a.
• 41:22
  He rightly thought he was the big biggest dick on the paddock
• 41:25
  and he fucking was, you know?
• 41:27
  Yes.
• 41:27
  So there have been other people since, you know, that have won
• 41:30
  more and longer, but whatever.
• 41:32
  Yeah, and that was, that was how I felt as a fan of Michael, was that
• 41:36
  you were kind of in awe of him.
• 41:38
  You almost felt the same way about him as the storm troopers feel about Darth Va.
• 41:42
  In that, you know, you didn't necessarily love him, but my words.
• 41:47
  You just respected the peerless capability.
• 41:51
  Yeah.
• 41:51
  Allied with the ruthlessness.
• 41:53
  It wasn't just that he was fast, it's that he would do whatever it took for
• 41:58
  his team to be placed Well, yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it.
• 42:02
  He, he was just it, it was.
• 42:03
  Maximum attack to a borrow from, uh, Marco Allen all the time in every
• 42:08
  respect, full team bit back at the factory, doing the laps, putting in
• 42:12
  the feedback every sort of Germanic way to get as much as you could out of it.
• 42:17
  And, and Hacken and did the same, I think in, in his, in, in his very finish.
• 42:21
  Sort of sisu way of, uh, complete.
• 42:23
  But, but like, but like Nika Rossberg, Hacken was only able
• 42:28
  to like summon up that level of intensity for a short period.
• 42:32
  Yeah.
• 42:32
  There were two or three years where Hacken in matched Michael.
• 42:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:36
  For a lot of the time.
• 42:37
  That, and for what it's worth, I should underline the last
• 42:40
  Grand Prix that I went to.
• 42:41
  I sat in the grandstand at Stoke Corner at Silverstone, and I watched
• 42:47
  Mika Hacken drive a better race than.
• 42:50
  Michael Schumacher or Juan Pablo Montoya.
• 42:54
  I watched their lines around Stowe.
• 42:56
  I was positioned where I could see the curb Hacker's.
• 42:59
  Lines were best.
• 43:00
  Michaels were next best.
• 43:02
  Nobody else was anywhere near except Montoya, who had like
• 43:06
  a dirt trackie kind of style.
• 43:08
  The car always seemed a bit of Bo Dage as it went around there, and I'm, I feel like
• 43:13
  that recollection is a fairly effective.
• 43:16
  Thumbnail of that particular era of Michael's career.
• 43:19
  We talked about the Mercedes years a little bit.
• 43:22
  You touched on the, the skiing accident at the end there.
• 43:25
  I want to touch on something which I think plugs together the skiing accident
• 43:29
  and the end of the racing career.
• 43:31
  Do you remember he did motorcycles for a little bit.
• 43:34
  He rode triumph, triples.
• 43:36
  Like Triumph, Daytona triples.
• 43:38
  And he got within, I remember you saying to me years ago that he had got
• 43:44
  within like a super bike kind of time, he'd have been like back of the grid
• 43:49
  at the super bike race kind of thing.
• 43:51
  And I think, I think if you talk to the bike riders, they were a bit like me.
• 43:54
  That's not that quick, you know, to a, a sort of enthusiast, neutral observer.
• 43:58
  You were like, wow, that's pretty quick.
• 43:59
  You know, I couldn't, you know, I couldn't dream of ever being that, that fast.
• 44:03
  But of course, the other thing to remember about that.
• 44:05
  Is it screwed him up, didn't he?
• 44:06
  At the accident and, and like smashed his neck up and that was why the following
• 44:09
  year when he was back he was weak.
• 44:11
  You know, he was physically unable to perform in the car, but you know, it was
• 44:15
  in the car anyway 'cause he was Michael Schumacher and it impinged on his ability
• 44:19
  to get back to the top, didn't it?
• 44:21
  You know, it meant he was outperformed by his teammate.
• 44:23
  Whether or not that was the whole reason.
• 44:24
  It certainly didn't help.
• 44:28
  Martin Brundle had a very unsatisfactory formula one career,
• 44:32
  no pole positions, no wins, no championships, and yet so much promise.
• 44:38
  So much promise.
• 44:39
  There was so much speed when he was young.
• 44:42
  You know, had there been no center, he'd have been dominant
• 44:44
  in Formula Ford, wouldn't he?
• 44:45
  Had there been no center, maybe it would've been him at Lotus.
• 44:48
  You know, you, you, uh, probably would've been Derek Warwick, wouldn't it?
• 44:51
  But you, you understand what, what I'm saying that yet now.
• 44:55
  He's the bloke that does the funny grid walk, isn't he?
• 44:58
  He's the old buffer that talks about the sport.
• 45:00
  Nobody associates Martin Brule with fire breathing, 1500 horsepower
• 45:06
  turbo formula one car or winning Lamar in a 204 horsepower V 12 Jaguar
• 45:13
  when the MO out Rai had no chica.
• 45:15
  She canes in kind of thing, but that's who Brundle really is.
• 45:18
  So you've got this strange.
• 45:20
  Failure in Formula one, but a complete life.
• 45:23
  Whereas Michael, what a peculiar back to front for sure.
• 45:28
  Yeah.
• 45:29
  It's a weird story, isn't it?
• 45:30
  Top of the world, all the money, you know?
• 45:33
  And like to be fair to him, it wasn't, I'm not saying he was boring, I'm not us.
• 45:36
  He was committed, married, loved his wife, committed to his wife.
• 45:39
  That was that, you know, there wasn't other stray thoughts, it seems to
• 45:43
  me, from, you know, not knowing him particularly well, just observing
• 45:45
  his career from a distance, that that was the way he approached everything.
• 45:48
  You know, once he decided on something, it was full on, you know, he was all
• 45:52
  in, you know, chips to the middle.
• 45:53
  The sudden death has allowed centers not so.
• 45:58
  Savory characteristics to be swept under the rug by popular memory.
• 46:04
  And Michael's afforded no such privilege.
• 46:06
  And if a picture, any picture ever emerges of what he looks like now,
• 46:12
  Lord knows David Hasselhoff doesn't look as good as he did in his twenties.
• 46:16
  Like our impression of Michael is that uber dominant.
• 46:21
  20 something, 30 something man.
• 46:23
  Not a 50 something man, let alone a 50 something man who's battling the
• 46:27
  kind of challenges that he's battling.
• 46:29
  It's weird.
• 46:30
  'cause I mean, you know, it does feel like a sort of, you know, a Disney story.
• 46:33
  It's like, you know, amazingly quick at the start, top of the world, slightly
• 46:36
  tails off and then just gone, not dead.
• 46:39
  Sort of like a way, you know, not talked about, I should say about that.
• 46:44
  And perhaps we should finish on this note that I remember when it
• 46:47
  happened, discussing it with you, and we both agreed that if anybody
• 46:51
  had the willpower to battle back from whatever had happened, anybody that
• 46:57
  we could think of had the willpower.
• 46:59
  Michael Schumacher was that individual.
• 47:02
  And I'm still, as we are talking here now, and as I think.
• 47:05
  Back about just the sheer focus and determination he brought to racing cars.
• 47:11
  I would be not completely surprised were he to make some kind.
• 47:18
  No, that's too much, isn't it?
• 47:20
  And if it's been too long.
• 47:22
  But you still feel like it's him.
• 47:24
  You feel like he still might manage it.
• 47:27
  You know, you talked about breaking the leg at Silverstone and
• 47:29
  being back in time for Malaysia.
• 47:31
  You know, it's that thing.
• 47:32
  You still feel like, my God, if anybody can overcome, if anybody
• 47:36
  can come back from the place that he's gone, that he is at the moment.
• 47:40
  If anybody can come back, it's Michael Schumacher.
• 47:43
  And I mean, again, I want to, he's never gonna hear this, but if he
• 47:46
  did, I would like to say cheers.
• 47:47
  You know, I really enjoyed watching him.
• 47:49
  The speed was unbelievable.
• 47:51
  Always.
• 47:52
  There was always something as a Michael, you know, as a Ferrari fan of that period
• 47:56
  where you were like, wow, look at that.
• 47:57
  Wow, look at that.
• 47:58
  Every weekend there'd be something on the Saturday or the Sunday
• 48:01
  to make you go Hu Diggity.
• 48:02
  You know, that was quite the thing for a long time.
• 48:04
  He was just absolutely peerless.
• 48:07
  Uh, and that's awesome.
• 48:07
  You know, I really enjoyed watching those races.
• 48:09
  And that was poetry, wasn't it?
• 48:12
  It really was poetry and, and even those boring seasons where he was just so
• 48:17
  much better than than everybody else.
• 48:19
  It was almost like going to a rock show where, you know the songs they're
• 48:21
  gonna play, but you still enjoy them.
• 48:24
  You know?
• 48:24
  It had that kind of a feel to it, didn't it?
• 48:27
  Definitely.
• 48:27
  Well, mark Godspeed, Michael, and thank you for your time.
• 48:31
  Cheers.
• 48:31
  Take it easy.
• 48:32
  Cool, cool, cool.
• 48:33
  Thank you.
• 48:33
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• 48:45
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• 48:49
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