Actually thats not true.

Piquet finished infront of him in 91, Alesi in 99 and right now it looks like that Rosberg is going to finish with the double amount of points (compared to MS) in the WDC standings.

Hamilton is driving in inferior cars since 2008, that year Ferrari had the better package, but worse drivers.. Last season his car was a dog till the German GP, but he still got some brilliant results. This season, the Red Bull is alot faster then Hamiltons Mclaren, but Hamilton is again the leader of the WDC standings.

This line of argument is contrary to Michael Schumacher´s own arguing, who claims that nowadays the cars are so easy to drive that anyone can do it, whereas way back when the cars were difficult you could see the real master drivers....and that he (MS) liked that (former) challenge more.

Here we are at an interesting crossroads - and it begs the question: "Really just how good was Michael Schumacher ?"
I am not speaking about his records...

According to that line of thinking then, Schumacher was brilliant; he could drive difficult cars to the limit better than everyone else. Now that the cars are easier to drive, he is struggling?

Schumacher WAS definitely brilliant - what puzzles me is that in an RTL interview some time ago (I think in April) he said that way back the cars were much more difficult to drive and that he reveled in that challenge, whereas nowadays everyone can drive the cars, which is why Rosberg is doing comparatively better than him.

It´s a contradiction in terms.

they can't be easier to drive or he'd be blitzing everyone because he's the great michael schumacher who could beat anyone without cheating, being in the best car, etc, etc.

plus i dont understand how there much easier when we have no TC anymore, yeah, we have more downforce but that doesnt help traction at low speeds like TC did does it?

It's funny to compare laps where one of the drivers made a mistake... Come on, herbert was not 1.5 sec slower even if the team was fully behind MS. Besides, I don't think MS ever was the 1 sec man some touted him to be. If he was, he would still be beating Rosberg. Easily.

I'm no physics expert but I believe downforce works at its most optimum during medium-to-high speed corners and good mechanical grip is required for slow speed corners.

I could be totally wrong however.

15 years is a long time.

Being 41 hurts.

Being out of any form of competitive motosrsports for 3 complete years (make it 3.5 years actually) hurts.

Coming back with limited testing hurts.

Coming back to an entirely new generation of cars, drivers, team etc will hurt.

Having said that, Schumacher has driven under every single F1 rule change since 1991 and has been at the top of his game winning with slicks, no traction control, big aero changes, grooved tyres, refuelling, no refuelling etc. It's only a matter of time (I hope) when he adapts. Problem is that the press is wanting his blood, as are many fans, as a TV commentators and as are the internet armchair experts.



Mike Tyson never lost his power but he lost everything else over his 20 year career. When Ali lost his speed he made up for it with experience etc etc etc.

May I suggest that we stick to the question of Schumacher's driving style.

I don't think Schumacher ever preferred an understeering car. He drove on the throttle and steering adjusted the position of the car and you cannot do that with an understeering car. Of course, in F1 the front suspension is usually harder than the rear one, but that is because there is so much traction (and thus potential oversteer).

That said, the great drivers managed very different cars. Fangio and Moss could cope with understeer and oversteer, although both preferred oversteer. 'Senna's driving style did not exist' (Berger; in the sense that he would adapt to the car), and Alonso totally modified his driving coming out of Renault (to McLaren and then to Ferrari).

To be honest I have never seem Schumacher I drive understeery. In sharp bends he rotated the car (I mean, the car rotated around its center), which can only be done properly in oversteery cars.

Of course, the concepts of oversteer and understeer are relative. No one can drive an enormously under- or oversteering car very fast.

Wait, what? Piquet in '91? The guy he was teammate to for 5 entire races? Alesi? '99? What?

And you know already how the season will end. That's awesome. PM me and let's go make some bets.

Agree the regs not favoring his style and him being slightly rusty, but he also looks tentative and I suspect hampered by not wanting to look like a rookie and going off too much.

Huh, I guess I missed the season when Schumi & Alesi were team-mates. What team was that again? Oh yeah, "Smoke-another-fattie-racing".

You already told us Michael was bad at Silverstone. So what's the problem comparing him to another driver who's equally bad at the same track then?

Never mind that minor point though; they drove for the same team and had equal cars. If they would've shown for instance Alesi's telemetry from the same year and compared it to Schumacher, we can be pretty damn sure you would've labeled that as "BS" as well, since they didn't even drive the same car. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

But I shouldn't try to discuss anything even remotely connected to Michael Schumacher with you, it's totally pointless. Your track record speaks for itself, another 60 seconds of my life wasted.

Quality post

This outlines quite well the abilities of various champions.

Indeed, a funny one. I was laughing when imagining Alesi and Schumacher being teammates, although they were (are?) good friends, as you know.

During Friday practise last week at Silverstone, Andrew Shovlin came on the radio telling Michael that he can't go full throttle & brake through some sections of the track or the ECU will shut the engine off.
Ant Davidson also explained a safety feature on the ECU that if you are using full throttle & braking, the ECU thinks that you've had an accident and then shuts the engine off.

Thats another thing that Schumi is struggling with as he likes to drive with throttle & brakes (go-kart style)

Thats something Schumi will have to come to terms with: an F1 car is not a go-kart.
He was lucky enough that in his vintage years the F1 cars were closer to go-karts than for the other 40 years of F1 history....

Really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zaM-KbXyoo...layer_embedded#!

Really.

Thanks for the link, excellent.

The only thing - I could not see JMF being on the throttle and the brake pedal at the same time like in a go-kart - how did you notice?

Interesting. This could very well explain why Schumacher has changed hisstyle to approach the corners. And without a car to his liking, he is nothing special. It would have been interesting to see him and Barrichello in the same car, unfortunately Brawn decided not to.

I'll make a summary about MS driving style:

2004 => FAST

2010 => SLOW

One could spend some time analysing this video. The way Fangio curbs speed with understeering and than puts the car right with a powerslide is magnificent. He locks the steering and the makes the car spin into position with the throttle, thus increasing revs and pointing the car.

Alas, this style is no longer used in F1. But in rallying you may still witness something akin to it (although different because of 4 wheel drive).

An F1 driver I know who eye witnessed this very race was astonished by Fangio.

I didn´t see Juan Manuel producing an understeer to curb speed, which minute/second of the video was that?
The way he throws around this oversteering Ferrari and correcting it is amazing, spectacular times, probably Lewis is the closest of the current crop to this style.

Michael Schumacher indeed belongs to another period, the "kart period of F1", with fresh tyres every now and then, refuelling and thus lighter cars, short sprint stints and super gluey tyres (the height of tyre developement plus tyre wars, even if slightly tempered by grooves) and the very direct suspensions.

Interestingly, most of these factors are gone in 2010, and so the trademark MS driving style is not working anymore. I still don´t think it´s the age. And it´s funny that all they do from "official" sides is to blame it on the tyres - how is Rosberg doing it with the tyres?

Uuh, my fault, sry. I meant Irvine

Sorry if someone else beat me to it, but in 1999 his brakes failed - surely that wasn't his fault?

Rubens WAS allowed to beat MS, only in Austria was there an exception to this. Rubens has come out and said this at some stage IIRC.

The 2005 Ferrari could only win when the Michelin runners weren't around - again not his fault.

2006: Again, different machinery and the Michelins were the better tyres.

EDIT: yes I WAS beaten to it, although I feel I added a bit to the debate regarding the tyres - since suddenly comparisons to teammates were ignored for 05/6.

It's some kind of demonstration run, not a race, so I don't know how much can really be read from the driving style. He may or may not have driven like that in a "real" scenario.

It is a fantastic video, though, with a very beautiful car.

You may see it in the Hotel corner, from 2.36: he enters too fast, but locks the steering so that the car understeers badly, but is all the time losing speed. At the apex he accelerates and spins the rear wheels, thus turning understeerting into oversteering and points the car at higher revs. What is remarkable is that he made it happen every lap.

I think he raced the car like this, at least in practice (and, in his Ferrari year, undoubtedly in the latter part of the race), because it fits perfectly with what I had listened to described by a live witness.

The traces don't include the braking. There is an F1 racing article by Peter Windsor (which is mostly crap) that shows the braking, throttle, speed and steering matched to track position through several corners for Mika and MS...clearly shows that Mika is a taditional brake more before turning in and then rolling toward the apex. MS turned in earlier, braked later and kept the brakes on longer after turning the wheel (ie trail braking). Pretty standard if you watch allot of inboard for MS.

That said, no fast driver does the same thing in every corner as driving a race lap is a series of compromises. So even though a driver may prefer to do a certain thing, they will change somewhat to suit the corner.

You could compare Schumi 2004 to Schumi 2006 and you'd see a difference, too. Big one being the difference of a V10 and a V8 and their effects on the driveability of the cars.

Every year, a team builds a new car because they have to meet the constantly changing rules. And its often that a new car means different car characteristics. And different car characteristics means a driver has to adapt all the time. Yea, the car can be setup and even developed to suit a driver's preferences, but when it comes down to it, many cars just tend to have inherent characteristics that simply have to be accepted(not that 'different' is always bad, either).

What I think has happened is that Schumi is just not quite the same as before, in terms of his pure abilities. He was out for 3 years, and at his age, a comeback was always going to be a challenge, especially when he's got a decently quick teammate that will set a fair benchmark. I thought he would have done better, but the guy certainly earned the right to the benefit of the doubt at the time.

At this point, I dont think that a team could just build a car that will magically make him the Schumi of old again. I do not think he's just BS'ing when he says he's been struggling with the tires, and with understeer and everything. The problem is that he's admitting he's struggling, which is pretty much what seperates top drivers from the 'just good' ones, ya know? Some drivers just kind of figure out how to make the most of a bad situation and pull out a result regardless of the car not doing what you'd prefer it to do. Lewis can do it. Alonso can do it. And the Michael of old could do it.

I certainly think he's still got some room for improvement, as its his first year with the team, but I do not expect any big huge improvements in the coming year or anything.
And its not like he's horrible out there. He's normally putting on a performance that would be acceptable for a driver of slightly lesser expectations.

Is that the Ferrari D50? And do you know what those things that look like sidepods (Sry, Im no native english speaker and don`t know how to describe this things else) are? I haven`t seen that before on the D50 which Fangio raced.

The key thing you are forgetting is that M Schumacher no longer has his number 1 status within the team and therefore his performances at Mercedes where things appear to as equal as he has had it since 1991 seem to a bit disappointing. I don't think he has lost it, I think he is the same guy driving alongside the best teammate he has had and without te seemingly preferential treatment. That is merely in terms of his performance in relation to Rosberg.

As for Lewis, well I don't see the logic in denying the talent and acheivment that this shockingly talented young man has in an attempt to support your man with blind fanatism. For a rookie to walk into F1 and beat his teammate, the current winner of the previous 2 WDC who was widely accepted to be the very best in te sport and then to win races in the 2009 McLaren - his talent can only be defined as very special indeed.

They're the fuel and oil tanks. Basically the thing was a bomb on wheels. As for Schumi's weird 2010 driving style, in a somewhat related way to the Fangio clip, there's the parody Schumi diary on the web which explains it, and I frankly think that it's more or less spot on:
"[...] as you have seen, results have not been as good as I would have imagined.
This is because I am expecting a car with a nice positive turn-in and all I am getting is a car that loves to go straight on.
That is the simple reason Nico is much better than me right now. After driving at Williams for so many years he is quite at home with a car that never does what he wants it to do. He doesn't expect it to turn in and he is not disappointed.
Having driven so long for the Scuderia in association with Ross and Rory I am most happy with cars that do what they are supposed to do. When it comes to a corner, the red cars will turn.
My answer has been to set up the car with a slidey rear end, but in doing so, the sliding is destroying my back tyres and I am slipping back through the field to have fights with that boy scout Alguersuari."

Thanks!

your often is not supported by statistics
actually most of your posts look like written from the a$$ but hey, it's a free world around
happy bshitting

I would say that great deal of the hype of Schumacher was because he used to trash his teammates. People started to believe he is heads and shoulders more talented than the other drivers and would beat anyone easily if teammates. But it seems that Schumacher beat his teammates so clearly mostly because
a) He had his special driving style and his cars were developed around that. This immediately put his teammates at dissadvantage who drive on more ordinary style. And these teammates were not the hottest drivers in F1 anyway. Solild top-10 drivers of their time but none of them won championships.
b) He never went to a team where he should compete for the number 1 position. Okay, in Benetton in the beginning he went to, but the fights were quite close there in the beginning. Piquet was old, but Schumacher is not faring much better now than Piquet then. And Brundle was nothing special as a driver, not champion in the making.

Schumacher is so succesfull because he had winning cars for all his career, and his teammates in those times were discriminated. I think it was very unfair to say that when he won it was because of the driver and when Hakkinen won it was because of the car. I'm glad Schumacher made this comeback to give a reality check for his fans.

There are drivers who tested much more before entering F1 than Lewis. For example Kovalainen.

The above, like any other "explanation" of MS problems this year, falls flat on the face because Rosberg is faster with the same equipment. I assume you don't take the "Rosberg is used to bad cars, that's why" argument seriously? Because I think it's hilarious.

The rest might have some truth to it, but I think not least MS' fans should recognize that whatever car he'd been given in his heyday, he would haven been able to make it go faster than most other drivers. Not anymore, it seems.

Very valid points

Not really. Sounds like a biased viewpoint.

This whole 'Schumacher had no.1 status so it wasn't fair' argument tends to ignore the fact that there's a REASON he had no.1 status in the teams he drove for. Its not like these teams just randomly chose him over the other driver for whatever reason.

And him having a 'unique driving style'(which I dont agree with) which his teams catered to isn't a very good argument, either. Why would a team choose to develop a car that is going to make it undriveable for everybody except this ONE person? Personally, I think a good car is a good car. Good cars dont tend to need a 'specialist' driving style to do well in.

The teams he's driven for have built good cars that even their no.2 driver could do well with on plenty of occasions. That they couldn't do it consistently like Schumi is a reflection on the driving abilities of the drivers, not of any preferential treatment, if you ask me.

I remember the book by Berger where he described his days in Ferrari and Benetton.
He said that when he got to Benetton, he received Schumacher's last year's car for tests, and it was literally undriveable for him since it was hugely oversteering.

Sorry to barge in, its again the chicken and egg question. If the driver is good, he should be able adapt to any car and drive fast. If the car is good, any driver can drive it fast.

But unique driving style allowed Casey Stoner to win his world title. Why are they changing the Ducati to suit other riders?

While there may not have been any preferential treatment at Ferrari, I do think Rory's designs suited Schumacher's driving a lot more. And add to that, his amazing driving abilities.

Any car will have its own inherent characteristics (suspension, tyres, dynamic behavior depending on track, etc etc) that will suit certain drivers . And a driver who adapts to it will certainly benefit.

Which is why Michael doesn´t like understeering or even neutral cars. He prefers a oversteery kart type set-up.

It´s bogus imo because Schumacher never showed any real speed at Silverstone.
He´s been outqualifying by his teammate in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2010.

If we look at Herbert vs Schumacher the gap was 1.5 seconds.

Looking in the mirror Herbert was on average 1.6 seconds slower than MS in qualifying
in Saubers + Stewarts against MS Ferrari at Silverstone. Sorry, but to me that seems to be the difference
between MS´s Benetton and Herberts Benetton, a simular performance gap that a Ferrari has over a
Sauber.

Herberts first real qualifying in the Benetton was at Brazil 1995, he put the car in 4:th place 0,5 seconds from
MS´s time. This on the quite technical track.
He has later said that he didn´t get the support, couldn´t look at MS´s telemetri and got very little testing.
He also claimed that he was made to look second rated, and I actually believe him to 100% knowing
what Flavio &Co later did with Trulli and Piquet and how they could cheat without the slightest regrets.

Is this why he can´t have another fast driver on equal terms that the team also wants to be fast?
Having a special oversteery setup isn´t the ultimate fastest, two wheel pair is lacking grip
making the overall package slower

Why are we comparing different driving styles from different cars, with different tires, and different regulations and configurations?

Which of course, feels perfectly neutral to him as opposed to chronic oversteer feeling for his teammate, which of course, is one of the reasons why his teammates were never very efficient driving the cars made for him.

It's not just positive steering that he likes, he also likes it very stiff, twitchy, and I would think to a driver with a different turn in would probably feel like horrible mid corner understeer, as they wouldn't be able to apply power when they would need to, at least not efficiently to make the car turn properly. Michael was a very late breaker, almost inducing understeer under braking which of course means he wouldn't be able to accelerate at what would be a proper point to accelerate for someone with a more traditional driving style. Makes for a completely different need in the characteristics of the car all the way through the corner. pointy going in, grippy midcorner, then most probably twitchy on exit too. I would imagine it would be a nightmare to drive for a lot of people.

This would be true if they were driving on constant radius circle. But when you have braking acceleration, long corners, short corners, tightening corners, opening corners, chicanes etc... it is not. It's a complex equation and a driver will never use 100% of the grip on both ends all the time. Some drivers feel easier to get to the limit when it's rear end warning first, some prefer front end doing the warning.

You speak already of him in the imperfect....

LOL and why shouldn't I?

Yes, why shouldn´t you. As things stand, it´s more or less over for Michael, bar a miracle or two.

Your analysis of his driving style is very exacting, it´s exactly what Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi found when they went to drive for Benetton in 1996. Of course, not that anyone took the proper conclusion, it just started a myth about Michael being soooo special.

Well, that myth is now being thorougly destroyed, cause Barbie is sooooo special.