or is this casting a dark shadow on Brawn as well as Schumacher. maybe those glory years at Ferrari had less to do with the dynamic duo of Brawn/Schumacher and more to do with the Ferrari team as assembled by Todt.

I thought we were talking about MS, the One and Only

- who can drive around anything
- who would leave no stone unturned in preparation for the 2010 season
- who will be the best mentally, physically, tehnically
- who could jump in a Ferrari last summer, win Spa and another race and totally embarrass Badoer, Fisichella, Raikkonen
- who will beat Barbie, Britney, whatever, into a pulp
etc.

Obviously that must be a different guy, not the one that emerged from the eulogies of kar, sean, dale, and the rest of his fanbase.

I am so glad he is back in F1! I was so sad when he announced his retirement in 2006, though I wish he had returned to Ferrari along side Alonso. Imagine that. Dream team or implosion would have resulted But yes it's so great to see him back, and I expect him to win a title in a few years, no I demand it!

As you can see, I don't often write in this thread, because of the exaggeration and twisting of what MS fans (not fanboys) say. In fact, this thread is a gathering place for MS detractors, rather than a place for reality based discussion.

Have you ever heard a car with TC Frans or you other accusers? Thought not. Distinctively different sound when in use regardless of which method you use.

There wasn't TC in use, teams can easily detect it with sound equipment let alone their own ears but they didn't and didn't protest.

I thought it was agreed that it was impossible to search all the code in the ECU programming, and as such, impossible to effectively police the TC ban?


I always assumed every team ran with the resources to implement it ran TC all the way from -95 up until it was allowed again for just that reason?

So you've obviously forgotten about Benetton then?

"We demand it!"

Forgive me, Your Majesty has forgotten to apply the pluralis majestatis.
Other than that, as always, I respectfully agree with His Majesty!

A very sharp first post, Jabo. Welcome to the Atlas F1 BB.

As far as I remember this is also the reason why there is now a standard ECU provided by McLaren for all teams. Before that it was indeed impossible to police...

nobody can ''drive around'' everything..a driver will always be faster in a car that suits his style as compared to a car that doesnt,no matter how much he adapts.as brawn mentioned to give the car a more responsive front,they shifted the weight too much to the front.that made the car have very little rear grip schumacher lost control on his trademark rear slides.theyre planning updates to settle the issue.

again im personally not sure whether we will ever see the schumacher of old return.but im keeping my opinion in check at the moment because the season's just started.if one could just wait for things to unfold further,see if the updates cause any improvement,see if he can get the confidence to get on the throttle earlier as his rear slide become less exaggerated.yes one could actually do that instead of being the ''naive beings'' that many here are and writing him off.

the TC discussion as well..u cant sit here in your armchairs and say hes lost it because there no TC anymore.u cannot form that opinion unless u have 1)the telemetry traces of his ornering and 2)engineers to explain them to you.and 3)after uve ruled out defective rear grip as the cause of his imbalance on his exit...as no one here has access to any of that data,the resulting opinions are uneducated and ignorant.

As you can see, I don't often write in this thread, because of the exaggeration and twisting of what MS fans (not fanboys) say. In fact, this thread is a gathering place for MS detractors, rather than a place for reality based discussion.

That's putting it a bit strongly, I just think it could be exacerbating Schumi's problems and no one else seems to have brought it up.

I just hope that MS fans, fanboys or whatever come to their senses and be more modest in their expectations. Not talking about you or the moderates who kept their feet on the ground but the loud ones who thought he would walk on water and not just in 2010 but in the summer of 2009 during his failed attempt to return as Massa's replacement. At the end of the day no driver can perform to the best of his abilities if the car is not suited to his style despite the claims to the contrary whenever the bashing experts wanted to prove how mediocre a driver is because he failed to adapt to car, tyres, launch control, etc. with the irrefutable arguement "well, MS never had problems and was able to drive around".

I just hope that MS fans, fanboys or whatever come to their senses and be more modest in their expectations. Not talking about you or the moderates who kept their feet on the ground but the loud ones who thought he would walk on water and not just in 2010 but in the summer of 2009 during his failed attempt to return as Massa's replacement. At the end of the day no driver can perform to the best of his abilities if the car is not suited to his style despite the claims to the contrary whenever the bashing experts wanted to prove how mediocre a driver is because he failed to adapt to car, tyres, launch control, etc. with the irrefutable arguement "well, MS never had problems and was able to drive around".

I personally do not expect miracles form MS. He was having difficulties keeping his top form already in 2006. Making a note about this, I don't believe a driver of his abilities would lose all of them in a relatively short term. But I am convinced it is much more difficult to get back to the form of those days, maybe even impossible. Age is unforgiving. But at the same time I think he'll manage to recover enough of it, only not so fast as many have expected. Add to that a car that's quite away from what he left, tyres that work in a different way, new team, new in-team atmosphere.

BTW, you should be remembering well that "a good driver can drive around anything" was a very often used phrase about Kimi, especially last year. But I am afraid this is OT.

I'm sure MS's dnf in sepang and broken wing in sepang flatters things even worser. But MS has had 3 years of virtually no testing, that's another point, racing is testing this season, especially at the start, Nico is gelling with the car in ways in which Jarno Trulli was gelling with his renault against Alonso in 2004, putting Alonso under pressure, even at his home race, Trulli's best season before he left I think, Rosberg is doing a good job, so was Trulli in 2004, but long term thinking is what the smart f1 fans are about, not jjumping to conclusions without understanding what can't be understood from the outside. Where's Trulli now...Rosberg has not achieved anything in f1 apart from podiums, he's doing well, but so was trulli in 2004. No one gave a toss about jenson button many years ago, maybe they won't again if he drives slow if he gets another bad car. long term f1 consistency through the years is what it is about, not half season wonders or 1 season wonders like HHF in 1999 in the Jordan, he had the best season of his career, Ralf Schumacher was challenging Michael in 2001, Ralf was a hot ticket in 2001, the perception of the car/tyre war made him look mighty, where is he now......

Is Rosberg having the best strint of his f1 career in 4 races or a few more or is Michael having a delayed kickstart to his comeback for many reasons ,we must also remember rossberg like massa, rubens and irvine, always will look better when someone like MS is having a bad time, especially if he's been away and coming back,, if Michael had been a second off or half a second off rosberg's pace in bahrain, then I would of signed off michael's come back as a failure there and then,it's a good time to kick Michael when he's down, but many have done that in the past, rosberg as good as he's looked so far, hasn't won anything monumental yet apart from being schuey's teamate in a bad stint of flyaway races for MS, that's all it is at the moment.

Well i look at it like this, if the Mercedes is as bad as what MS is making it look then Rosberg is having one hell of a season. From what i can see for MS to win races this year the Mercedes evolution car is going to have to be better than all the other cars but even then he still has to beat Rosberg

You guys want to dismiss a man's brilliant career based on a couple races this year? If your argument wasn't sad, it would be funny!
One can only hope that as you get older some common sense will seep into your psyche, because I certainly don't think you can just buy it somewhere.

Schumacher may or may not reclaim the upper echelon of this sport, but at this point I doubt anyone knows one way or the other. Instead of arguing about it, why don't we just wait and see what develops?

Cooper

An IF this somehow happens, I can predict that the most used argument will be "Because he gets a preferential treatment"

Michael was not hyped up prior to his debut like some young drivers are already before they arrive (eg. Montoya). In fact, hardly even anybody knew his name because it wasn't typical to take drivers from sporstcars to F1. Like today, team bosses would rather take F3000 drivers or maybe F3 drivers. That was also the reason why Frentzen left Mercedes' sportscars programme for a seat in F3000.

Michael however stayed with Mercedes and that ironically made him an F1 driver quicker than F3000 did with Frentzen! Michael was taking part in the 1991 C Group sportscar World Championship when his manager, Willi Weber got an info about Gachot being jailed and Jordan needing a driver. He phoned and faxed a lot until he got through to Eddie Jordan and offered him the services of Michael. Jordan was like: "Who the heck is Michael Schumacher?"

But Jordan decided to give him a try. They gave him a test in Silverstone and they were impressed. Michael lapped quicker immedtaiely than anybody before in that Jordan car! Jordan said after his first testing in Silverstone that the race engineer couldn’t believe the lap times. He said that those are the times they had never seen, and they thought that,Schumi found a shortcut. During those 40 laps,Schumi broke the lap record of Jordan in Silverstone. It was a short test and Michael was about to thrown into deep water right away the next week in the Belgian GP. Jordan asked his manager if Michael knew Spa and Weber replied "of course", but it wasn't true. Michael never drove before in Spa.

The facts from forix.com

Here is how Schumi did in his first ever F1 weekend

In First free practice: (11) 32 M.Schumacher Jordan/Ford 1'55.322 4.979 216.645

In 2nd free practice: (5) 32 M.Schumacher Jordan/Ford 1'51.071 1.108 224.937

In 1st qualifying: (8) 32 M.Schumacher Jordan/Ford 1'53.290 4.190 220.531

In 2nd qualifying: (6) 32 M.Schumacher Jordan/Ford 1'51.212 3.401 224.652

In Warm up: (4) 32 M.Schumacher Jordan/Ford 1'56.986 1.775 213.564

In the race he had a DNF.

"It was the confidence with which he performed as much as what he did which impressed. Immediately, he was described as arrogant, Teutonic, super-confident or cool. It was hard for his contemporaries and critics to accept what he did. His teammate Andrea de Cesaris was pushed beyond his own normal limits. For everyone, it was hard to beleive that this boyish-looking slim-as-a-wisp driver could achieve such times in such a confident fashion. His aloofness, his remoteness, his celf-centered confidence made it worse and virtually every reporter in the paddock who came into contact with him was to be intrigued. This German boy, who came from sportscars, was blasting a hole through the Formula One estabilishment, handling himself with ease in and out of the car and oozing confidence. What made it even more difficult to accept was the simple fact that it was all natural. Yes, he was really that good.

'On Friday, I never tried Eau Rouge flat. I nearly braked and at first I took it in fifth gear and then in sixth. That was a problem, to get used to a part of the circuit like this where you can do it flat, but without experience so you do do it slowly, step by step,' Schumacher recalled later. 'With my first set of qualifiers, I was just on my lap when Eric van de Poele went off and practice was stopped. The second time I tried with the same set of tyres and Prost blocked my lap. He was starting his quick lap. I braked at the limit for me, but he braked a bit too early for me and there were only two possibilities. Crash into him or use the escape road... I thought it was better to use it.'

It was a measure of the stunning effect of Schumacher's qualifying performance at Spa (seventh on the grid for his first race on arguably the world's most daunting Grand Prix circuit) that many people refused to beleive or accept it. One was Schumacher's veteran Italian teammate Andrea de Cesaris. 'Andrea was distraught at the end of that qualifying,' said Phillips. 'He was just schocked. "I know I didn't drive well, but one and a half seconds!" he said. "It's not possible. Not possible."

'There were some very interesting points, again, which struck me. One was that on a particular part of the circuit, Andrea was in quandary. If he kept it in fifth gear all the way through the section, the car got very high on revs and very nervous. And he said "If I try in sixth gear then, likewise, the car bogs down." He was talking about the bit where the track comes from down the top of the circuit, where you come into the first one in fifth and then take the second part in sixth and, obviously, to change gear in the middle of it was difficult... I said to Michael, in the debrief: "Do you have the same problem?" He said, "Well, I did for three laps and then I realised that what I do is go into it in sixth gear and I just left-foot brake and it just steadies the car in the middle and then I just take both corners in sixth." And he had not even mentioned it. He had just worked it out all for himself. For him, it was perfectly natural. He was simply driving the car.

'There was no issue. He had not come in and said "Look I've found this a problem or that. And there was no mention of anything at all. As far as he was concerned, it was the fastest way to get the car round those two corners. He had worked out all the other options and none of them were ideal. But this was the best compromise. There was also another bit, coming back to the "Bus Stop" chicane, the two very quick left-handers, which was interesting. If you looked at the section times, he was very quick there. Although he was in the top seven or eight all the time, he was always about second or third quickest. Andrea was unhappy with that section in his car. He said that "As you lift, just as you turn in, it gets a bit unsettled on the bumps", and I remember I talked to Michael about it. "Yeah," he said. "But it's okay if you just drive it flat. The lift actually destabilizes the car and if you keep it flat it's okay." Sure enough, it was.'

I thought moving the weight distribution foward increases understeer as there is more mass that needs to be accelerated at the front, or is that they can't get the front tyres to their operating temp because there's not enough load on them to begin with?

An IF this somehow happens, I can predict that the most used argument will be "Because he gets a preferential treatment"

If MS gets the car more suited to him he can beat Nico even without preferential treatment. However it's hard to separate the two - if the team deliberately took direction that favored more MS' preference of the car characteristics, does that constitute preferential treatment or not?

Michael won’t walk in there and expect to be number one to Nico. The fastest guy will be the number one and that’s always been the case wherever Michael has been. If Nico goes quicker than him then he can expect to be team leader but I don’t expect that to happen.

When I was at Ferrari with Michael, I did the majority of the testing, the tyre work and the chassis work. But Michael could just get in the car and go fast immediately. He was quicker than me so he was the number one. When I was close to winning the title in 1999, Michael came back after his broken leg and proved he wasn’t just the best number one but also the best number two in Malaysia when he let me past for the race win.
Eddie Irvine

Ditto.

It's beyond belief at times the immature dribble that gets posted on this BB. So many of the posters act like a bunch of 12 year olds.

If MS gets the car more suited to him he can beat Nico even without preferential treatment. However it's hard to separate the two - if the team deliberately took direction that favored more MS' preference of the car characteristics, does that constitute preferential treatment or not?

Well the present car doesnt suit Rosberg either, i'm sure he he'll be fine

It's a bit of a circular argument though isn't it? I mean, we have really no appropriate point of reference! As far as we may know, Schumacher is adapting beautifully, you can't compare him to ANY OTHER 41 YEAR OLD DRIVER THAT HAS BEEN RETIRED FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS , now can you? How would he measure up if everybody was coming back from a 3 year hiatus? Would Rosberg be as sharp? I DON"T THINK SO.


Cooper

Lots less fun here than it used to be. Not much discussion anymore, just lots of rock throwing.

old man sponsored into F1 by Osama once.....

gotta love him....

You guys want to dismiss a man's brilliant career based on a couple races this year? If your argument wasn't sad, it would be funny!
One can only hope that as you get older some common sense will seep into your psyche, because I certainly don't think you can just buy it somewhere.

Schumacher may or may not reclaim the upper echelon of this sport, but at this point I doubt anyone knows one way or the other. Instead of arguing about it, why don't we just wait and see what develops?

Cooper

lol wut? schumacher was the pilot that knocked down the world trade centre aswell?

Pity Schumacher cant beat Nico and has to get them to change the car to disadvantage Nico and favour him. if they give him a car that suits him and Nico still beats him then one would have to laugh at this guy. Right now he is being exposed!

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2010/01/04/irvi...-be-number-one/




Looking at it now, Irvine and everyone, the team, wouldn't of expected early struggles for MS and even some badluck, it wasn't in the script, but neither was MS's return. now it's doubts about MS's improvement, it's all unpredictable, Schumacher has a way of surprising people. Maybe he'll pole at Spain and race away for the win, or maybe he and Nico will dnf, and both are on the front row at Monaco, it's f1, anything can happen and nothing can be written off until the last lap, the end of 2008 proved that.

Bin Laden were Williams sponsors.

I've just realised why it's taking MS so long to catch up - he's needed time to study the new rules in depth to find alternative ways to cheat without being caught

Ah yes I remember Alan Jones mentioning that once! Amazing!



I hope he actually knocks Niko like he did Hill at Adelaide. Why did he only do that once?!

Hmm maybe Jerez 97 was another try lol

This might be a bit off topic from the discussions that has been going on here but I would like to divert the attention given to anti schumi posts and would like to talk about as the title of this thread say " Michael Schumacher (merged), Man, Machine and his Racing Craft" I would like to talk about Michael's first ever race, and that was at Spa.

Here is how Schumi got the drive:

He improved throughout the weekend. Started the race on 7th position and then overtook 2 cars went to fifth position and then his car broke down.



Here are a couple of quotes on the 1991 Spa weekend from Timothy Collings' book: 'Schumacher - The life of the new Formula One Champion'






Few pictures from that weekend






To me Michael Schumacher will always be one of the greatest racing driver ever. Those who don't believe that's fine it's your opinion but you surely are living in denial.

Exposed as what? so what if he never beats Nico. The same could be said for any driver over 40. It dosent take away the fact that he is still easily in the top 5 best drivers of all time. He came back given it ago dosent mean you can take away how quick the man used to be all his achivements.

With time that elapsed even Hill has second thoughts what actually happened in that race, and it is not the same tone you carry around in here.

After polluting in here for a while maybe you can now move over and meditate for change what Hamilton, in team you like, will do next race? Kimi is not here to be rammed again, but maybe some other Hami-stunt could be in the channels? Why don't you elaborate and speculate in that arena? It seems to be Hamilton's hallmark, creating a new controversy at each new race. Isn't his string of exploits more current to speak about? Perhaps, but not here, please.

Good post. Gives the critics the perspective. Schumacher really was amazing.

Good post. Gives the critics the perspective. Schumacher really was amazing.

Was or Is???...

How does someone like that just lose that creativity/skill from sitting out a few years.. weird how he can't get to grips with this year's car/tires..

Exposed as a driver who got help and is overrated. Look any of the top 10 drivers now would have won the the same numer of titles with that ferrari team and the prefential treatment he got. He cant beat Nico and now he is having a car built just for him so he can rival Nico.