We don’t know much about who Michael Schumacher was as a motorsport personality. Quite simply, you can’t talk about Formula 1 without ever including the German legend. He is one of those whose name has become synonymous with the sport in which he started. He was once the most successful F1 driver and it took 17 years for his record to be broken by Lewis Hamilton. Michael and Ferrari were the team to beat in the early 2000s, much like the dominance of Hamilton and Mercedes in today’s V6 turbo hybrid era.
Today Michael’s son Mick Schumacher drives in Formula 1 and drives for the Haas F1 team, and it’s sad that Michael isn’t there to see his son’s progress. Since he had his skiing accident in 2013, we have never heard much about the seven-time world champion, as his true state remains in the private sphere of his family. Netflix’s Schumacher documentary reminded us of Michael’s greatness behind the wheel and gave us a glimpse into the German legend outside of a Formula 1 car and revealed fascinating secrets about his personal life.
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Schumacher was not born rich
via newsbytes
Unlike other Formula 1 drivers, Michael never had rich parents who supported his racing career, and even said in the documentary that he never thought he could get a single-seater degree.
via dailystar.co.uk
Maybe only the fact that his father Rolf ran a local kart track in Kerpen and his mother took care of the canteen on the track brought him to racing.
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Michael knew what he wanted early on
via Sky Sports
In the documentary, Schumacher’s father Rolf spoke about his son, saying that his son had “trained like a world champion as a child,” and during his karting days people quickly noticed how different his lines were compared to other competitors.
via Flickr
Michael also knew how to bend the rules in his favor when he obtained a karting license in Luxembourg at the age of 12 as it was cheaper to get and did not have to go into qualifying races as they were the only competitors compared to his home Germany.
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He beat his kart rivals with discarded tires
Via: Reddit
As mentioned earlier, the Schumacher family did not have the financial means to support Michael’s career, but to the merit of the German, he used his situation to his advantage. While his father ran the kart track in Kerpen, Michael used discarded parts that had been left by karting teams on the track and put them on his kart.
via Pinterest
Here Michael was most satisfied with the win. He said: “I was always happy to have won with the worst and not the best equipment and having to really fight like that was an additional motivation for me.”
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Mentality win at any cost
about Libero
We all knew that Michael Schumacher was an unscrupulous competitor and didn’t stop at anything that prevented him from being successful. He had a win-for-expense mentality that was sometimes a little exaggerated.
via Williams F1
The documentary highlighted his on-track struggles with Mika Häkkinen, Damon Hill and David Coulthard, and Ross Brawn shared that Michael rarely admitted his mistakes and believed he was never wrong.
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Senna was shocked by the speed of the German
via deviantart.net
One of the most important highlights of the documentary was the story of Michael Schumacher’s debut in the 1991 season in Spa, which attracted the attention of the F1 world, including the legendary Ayrton Senna, who was the face of Formula 1 at the time.
via car magazine
Senna knew that Michael was an extraordinary talent that would make life in Formula 1 difficult for him and was determined to put the German in his place when he faced Schumi after the collision at the 1992 French Grand Prix.
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The story of Imola 1994
via Netflix
The 1994 San Marino Grand Prix will forever be remembered for Ayrton Senna’s fatal accident, and the Schumacher documentary shed light on other things that happened on that fateful day.
via Twitter
Schumacher won the race and seemed to have celebrated on the podium, but that was because they were not informed of Senna’s condition at the time and Michael initially even thought the Brazilian would be recovering from his injuries. His rival’s fatal fall left a lasting mark, and Schumacher even burst into tears years later as he offset Senna’s win at the 2000 Italian Grand Prix.
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Michael stayed up late to work on his car
via Twitter
As described in the documentation, Schumacher loves the challenge. He was already champion in a row with Benetton when he joined the famous Ferrari team in 1996, which had not won a championship since Jody Scheckter in 1979.
about planetf1
His new Ferrari, however, was a complete dog of a car, and his team-mate Eddie Irvine even thought it was “almost undrivable”. Because of this, his wife Corinna said Michael worked with the mechanics until at least 10 p.m. to get every ounce of performance out of his car, especially in his first season, which was highlighted by his impressive win in the rain at the 1996 Spanish Grand Prix .
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Ferrari was about to drop it
about F1 history
The current FIA President Jean Todt was instrumental in bringing Schumacher to Ferrari along with Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, which completely changed the fortunes of the team. However, after failing to win the 1997, 1998 and 1999 seasons, Todt announced that Ferrari management was starting to wonder if Michael was the right driver for the team.
Via michael-schumacher.de
Even the unbreakable Schumacher had doubts as to whether he could win the Scuderia a title, as his wife revealed, but these thoughts quickly subsided when they finally broke through and won the first of five championships in a row in 2000.
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Its condition remains a secret
via Eurosport
We had hoped to get an insight into the current state of Michael Schumacher in the documentation, as we have not seen the German legend since 2013 and we unfortunately have to wait a little longer.
Via: The sun
However, it is good to know that he is being looked after in the best possible way. Michael’s wife Corinna reveals that the seven-time world champion is “here, but different”. Sure, no one will be the same after a devastating brain injury, but we take comfort that there is still hope to see him in the future.
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Mick misses his father painfully
Via: evening standard
We all know that Michael Schumacher’s son Mick is now racing in Formula 1, a sport his father dominated in the past, but the documentary reveals that the seven-time world champion was a loving father to his children and shows his devotion as a family man. especially in his final days in F1.
Via: FormulaSpy
After the skiing accident in 2013, Mick could only wish to have a father-son bond to share his racing knowledge with Michael and even said “he would give up everything” just to talk to his father about motorsport, and that they “would understand each other differently now” because they “speak a similar language, the language of motorsport”.
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About the author
Jan Millard Lacuna
(145 published articles)
Jan Lacuna is an engineer, car enthusiast, sim racing, and real-life racer from the Philippines who now works as a writer for HotCars.com. He enjoys writing about the world of racing and his experiences with Japanese cars and their culture.
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The post 10 things we learned from Netflix’s Schumacher documentary first appeared on monter-une-startup.
