Aim of this thread is to discuss issues related to Michael Schumacher. After Bahrain voices were heard about several weaknesses in his current cornering technique. It is my hope we can continue in that spirit, and check on him through the season.

I wish to welcome all, friends and also those ready for conversion as well.;)

QUOTE (Uwe @ Mar 22 2010, 13:28)

This post has been transferred from other thread, but I would like to continue with this subject. Anyone?

To avoid disappointment, I hope in the last sentence of post 1 you meant conversation

I take conversation, but I shall be happier with both.

Michael was used to kick the rear end off curbs. Something that is not possible early on in races. He is sure to take a time to settle back into F1 and I hope that he is successful. I always thought that he would have been better of moving to another team and giving himself some new challenges rather than retiring. He is doing things the hard way imo.

It will certainly be interesting to see how Michael improves throughout the season. I expect him to close the gap a bit more in Melbourne's qualifying.

Hmmmm. Possibly the greatest driver of all time, makes a pretty impressive comeback and talk is of "could do better" nature!!! Without idolising the 7 times WDC I think any weaknesses perceived by armchair critics are "incredible". Peter Windsor used to analyse various drivers' styles to the extreme, fun for a few minutes until you engage your own brain and realise he is talking bovine emissions. What works for one driver won't work for another, what style suits one car setup doesn't suit another. And that's before we even think about different corners and sequences of corners, and circuits, weather/track conditions.

What Michael will do to go quicker IMO will be unseen outside the pit garage and the Mercedes GP headquarters, not so much in the car. This is why Michael overcomes all his teammates sooner or later.

From Urban Dictionary:

1. schumacher

A term given to someone when they're so annoyingly good at something, it takes all the fun out of it for everyone else.
Jimmy - "Do you fancy a game of footy down the park?"

Ted - "Yeah, that would be ace, shall I give Bob a call and see if he wants to come?"

Jimmy - "Nah, that Bobs a ****ing Schumacher, he'll ruin it for everyone!!"

Not much doubt about it, however question remains, whether his exit from a break zone can be faster.

You don't actually believe that you have insight in this area do you? Maybe we should send Schumacher some pointers on how to drive the car. That should help!

If insiders reveal some detail as to the problems, then fine, it's an interesting discussion. But to speculate over things a bunch of untrained eyes see, without knowing the particular details (which there are plenty), is just arrogant.

Cooper

If one acknowledges they are speculating then I find such activity to be mutually exclusive with arrogance.

As the guy who wrote the lines above, let me put some things straight. I'm a big Schumacher fan and it wasn't by any means my intent to bash him. On the contrary - for being absent three years I think he has done an excellent job.

But fact is he was slower than his teammate and I tried to figure out why that was. Having no telemetry data available I could only do it by comparing the onboard videos of him and other drivers so I know the result can only be a guess. I never claimed it to be the absolute truth (and having seen some of the preposterous tinfoil-hat theories on this board I like to think it was at least a pretty straightforward guess).

And I'm sure MS will analyse things for himself and he doesn't need my help with it.

MS used to make the difference on corner entry and mid-corner. He said that himself when TC was introduced....at the time he said that since TC helps on corner exit, it would not dampen his 'advantage'.

That said - he will surely improve as he gets more into the swing of things again..

Like many of the threads that have sprung up recently I think you need to wait a few races before trying to come to any conclusions.

If someone has some onboards of Schumacher in the Merc it would help.

Also, I think someone told me that Schumacher himself complained about the difficulty in pointing the car on the throttle at the exit of curves?

Anyone knows?

But then what shall we do with our spare time.......?

Dale, it was not my speculation, but it cought my interest, and that's how MS's thread was born.

Uwe, your contribution was welcomed. I am Michael's fan too, and I hold the same opinion as you do, but fact is, that he is not the same (yet), and we are merely trying to understand factors behind it. Could be that some ingrained driving techniques from Ferrari days aren't compatible with the car he has now, and it will take time to make a change. Lets contine with these observations because after all it is why we are coming back to this forum, having common interest.

as its all guesswork we're doing here,id say hes probably suffering from narrower front understeer more than anything else.nearly all the regulations this year integrate an inherent US tendency into the cars..softening the rear shocks (or stiffening the fronts) would further add to his woes more than anything else.he like a very responsive front end(oversteery),softer rears would make him suffer from more corner entry understeer.

he just needs time to get used to the new cars.cant tell if its going to be a couple of weekends or the whole season.webber thinks its going to be the later

It was just one race after 3 years off openwheel racing, I want to see some more races from him before making any analysis.
In the past after his one bad race (in his standard) we never need to analyze why he was slower at that time. Why we need to do it now? (I know he is 41 but I still believe he is still quick, not as fast as when he was ~30s but still very close).

Definitely; aside childern on the BB, rest of us we all agree that more time is required for him to settle in. I have speculated in another thread whether actually Michael was hired to aid MGP to develop the car, because without 2009 DD there might not have been glory of victory for BGP, and Ross probably realized that.

Now when other teams caught up with BGP, we do not know where Michael's car really is, and we hope that next races should tell us more. Then his teammate will be next benchmark how to can measure Michael's comeback.

This thread initially was not intended as critique of Michael, nor should serve as psychoanalytical thesis about the man, but Uwe found somewhere interesting hypothesis why Michael is probably loosing time in some corners, and should he improve, how much impact that would have on his lap time. I was hoping that someone else can contribute to that subject as well.

Michael has the answers to these questions and will soon deliver them, the man has lost no speed

Webber seems to doubt that MS's performances will improve to any great amount and expects Rosberg to continue beating him

We have patience to wait, and let Michael answer to him. Please do not forget, that we heard voices that were suggesting that MS should stayed in retirement. I for one am pleased that he is back, although aims behind his return aren't as straight forward as I thought initially, namely, hop in the car, and beat the pants off the other guys.

Scenario (perhaps my imagination is running wild) discussed in very tight group of less than five people around his return might have possibly included topics like:

1. You like racing, want to come back; we at MGP are OK with it, and facilitate yoru return.
2. In return for your joy, you help us to get car (like Ferrari in the past) from midfield to the front, and if you win some races in between, that's fine with us as well.
3. Do not worry about Nico R. , or WDC. get what you can, no pressure on our side, and we back you up.

?

Hehe... in that (same?) article, Villeneuve sayz
http://www.f1sa.com/index.php?option=com_c...&Itemid=219

Now, he's preaching for himself at the same time (if he still hopes to make a return) but still, it's an 'expert' opinion as much as Webber's.

Hardly a midfield car it won 2009 WDC and WCC

The last time MS raced F1 at Albert Park -



Now let's see what happens this time lol

Its in JV's interests that MS does well because if he doesnt he hasnt a cat in hells chance of getting back into F1

Oh really? I would have *never* thought of that.

Question is, in relationship what Michael drives today, where the vehicle would be without DD in 2009? Answer is here, because once other teams balanced the equation, the same WCC car became somewhat more of a modest product.

I don't understand what your analisys is about. MS has never been an early accelerator. The style you described is his natural style that I've always seen him drive with, seemed to me, same ole Mike. He's always been extremely late on brakes and is ussually late on the power compared to other drivers, still, carried enough momentum through turns to arrive at the other end quicker than the comparison.

I once saw in this forum some telemetry data that compared him with Rubens and Schumacher ussually gained his time on the first half of the turns (braking, turn in, mid corner) Rubens was on the power earlier and most times even reached higher top ends because of that, but not enough to gain back what Mike had gained between braking and turn in.

I think he's slower than his teammate simply because he's 41 years old and his teammate is like half of that, I don't think it has anything to do with driving styles or talent.

I could not find any turn specific comparative data on the web between him and Nico R., but if Uwe's source is claiming that Michael was loosing time in turns (comparatively to Nico), are we able to (guess and) assign ratios for time loss due to: Age factor : Michael's style : Diff. with MGP car control ?

I do recall an old video overlay from Magny in which his travel path was compared (in one turn) to his brother's, and apparently whilst breakpoint and acceleration was important, racing line taken was equally present, and in that case determining factor why he came out quicker out of the turn. If he is using the same technique today, and I am of course not cetain of it, car mobility (or control) would play an essential role.

Just agreeing with you

Haha, if you could quantify the time lost due to age factor you could have found the fountain of youth, please let me know when you find it!!

did he take that interview while running in 7th position with his teamate leading the race?

Well i guess he's not coming from a position of strength himself

On March 3 I have attempted to enumerate some attributes which could be suspect, because I could not quantify statements like "he is too old", and I got curious which one will be detriment to his driving. I am not physiologist, thus I did not finish the job, but men around this business, I assume, will have missing data, and know how to read them.

Here are some factors how (I think) we can measure his "youth".

1. Motivation.
2. Stamina.
3. Reflexes.
4. Experience.
5. Interaction with new environment.
6. Mental stability.
7. Peripheral vision.
?

He is not running Boston Marathon, and as such I evaluate him differently.

In my book he is competitive on all accounts; I do hesitate only about items 5 and 7.

Item 5 can be fixed in a few races to get on the par with leading figures in F1 racing. Then I expect a man to get on the par or ahead of the machine capability.

Item 7 is unknown to me. I am sure he had passed entry medical tests, but I do not know where is the licence pass-bar, and how does that standard compares to what he shall require in the most critical situations.

In Bahrain man, machine and track were out of synch. Hopefully in Oz we will see what was fixed, however I do not expect miracles. They might be on right course, yet still stay in 6 pts range.

I think so to. Schumi is doing good, even better than I had expected, but you do not come out of retirement at 40 and beat those who have every cell in their body tuned for racing. There is some physical and psychological changes that can not be reversed. It's a curve from birth to death, up, down. With hard work and dedication you can affect the steepness of the downlslope and you can even turn it upwards, but it will never reach the previous peak.

Dude, are you serious? all this time I thought you were just messing around but now you seem serious lol

You don't seem to realyze the ammounts of stress, G loads and just plain getting banged around that these drivers go through in a GP weekend, not to mention traveling and such. You literally have to be a special breed of human being just to drive these around and cope with the driving forces, I mean, your eyeballs almost pop out of their sockets when you brake type of forces. Years don't go by without weathering on a person, Schumacher, even for the great shape that he's in, is not immune to this. He's still a great driver, and better than 90% of the feild I would say, even at his age, that still says a lot.

That was awesome! The tyres just would not heat up, and he tried everything. He literally drove the wheels off of the thing It is races like that that really make you understand how great he was, he never gave up. Of course in that case he hit that stupid bump in the grass and though he normally would have saved the car, it pitched him into the wall. Since his pace was not good enough for points anyway, he drove over the limit to make something of it. I wish more drivers did this rather than settle for a position.

Cooper

Good thread!

Agree; BTW survival battle of body from influence of vibrations, and G-forces are covered in my consideration under "stamina".

http://player.video.news.com.au/heraldsun/#1450410785

Michael looks pretty fit, and his head movement seems to be smooth; no signs of jarred movement we would see under residual stress (like he would be nursing it). Looks Ok.

I understand that the car is not good for now. But they can't make Michael pasta for lunch, this can't understand. And he have to go to Ferrari to eat?
From Antonio Lobato Blog: "As we talked with Alonso ... Surprise! In the hospitality of Michael Schumacher Ferrari appeared. Say hello to some people, greets Fernando, do not say hello to other people at the table and sits alone at a table behind us . There has been a long time until the cook has been a huge plate of spaghetti. Moral: the food must be bad Mercedes. While Michael was eating at the door dozens of photographers immortalized the snapshot. It was curious, very curious, but no one should be surprised because the seven-times still great friends at Ferrari."

schumachers driving style analysed to death with telemetry comparison http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2p2nRK-p4 (pretty old but people dont change driving styles its a part of who they are)

I really don't understand what your point is. If you are slower than your teammate you can always attribute that to a certain reason, whether that is braking too early, getting on the throttle too late or not having the cornering speed of the other guy. Technically this is pretty straightforward, if you have all telemetry data available. Saying "I'm 41 years old hence I'm slower" is not what MS - and me too - considers to be a satisfying explanation.

MS is a late braker and at his peak he might have been a bit later on the throttle than others but he was always faster than them. Now he isn't so there must be a reason behind it and my reasoning was what I deduced from carefully watching the videos I have available. I might be wrong here but it is a better explanation than "MS is too old".

@Arknor: I knew the video for a long time you linked to and in one respect you are right. I found a very short clip from Bahrain in the meantime where MS' telemetry data was shown - not the corner I would have liked - and where you could clearly see he went on the throttle progressively. But - and this is the difference - he was not on the throttle at all in midcorner in Bahrain while in your video from Silverstone he exactly did that: He was quite early on the throttle already in midcorner, something btw which Massa did in Bahrain too and which I already mentioned.

I agree, great drive, I even remember ferrari president say "A BIT OF GRIT"!!!
it's what makes him entertaining for a viewer, sometimes it's those extra risks he takes to push and go one further that can either be great or bring him down. You know with Button having problems in that race ahead of him near the end of the race, Schuey if he played it safe would of come out with decent points, but then he would of done the expected drive of any driver perhaps.

He was also down on engine power, as ferrari had a piston problem, he had unheated tyres and less engine power until he got to Imola, and even in Imola there were tyre issues in the race, but didn't stop him from making those super quick inlaps to help himself get in front of Alonso, great stuff, and I was there at Imola to witness live. If that was the last Imola race ever, then it went out on a good note with the ambassodor of Imola winning it again, he was mighty at that track.