Former Mercedes Formula 1 boss Norbert Haug has announced that he had secret negotiations between Michael Schumacher and McLaren at the end of the 1990s.
Schumacher, who was a two-time world champion at the time, and Ferrari forged an era-defining rivalry with McLaren and Mika Häkkinen, with the two drivers sharing seven consecutive titles between 1998 and 2004.
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Haug, whose Mercedes company was supporting McLaren at the time, has explained how close the Woking-based team was to poaching a driver who won five of its seven championships with Ferrari.
“I knew Michael from his time as a Formula Koenig driver, F3 driver, then he came to Mercedes before I was there, already as a junior, then he was in Group C,” said Haug on the Beyond the Grid podcast .
“I came at the end of ’91 and he had a full season with sports cars. We won the last race of the season at Autopolis – Karl Wendlinger and Michael Schumacher.
“In 91 we had already helped Michael go to Jordan and then in 1992 it was Benetton and he became world champion, then he went to Ferrari.
“It took him five years to win the championship in 2000 and we were competitors, but apart from the racetrack in the paddock, we always had a good relationship.
“We always have, or I had a joke, that at some point we would have to do it together. There were some secret negotiations in 1998, but it never came together.”
Mercedes lured Schumacher out of retirement for an unsuccessful three-year term from 2010 to 2012 when the German manufacturer returned to Formula 1 as its own designer.
Haug added: “At the end of the period, the last three years, we were together and it’s an absolute shame for his skiing accident because Michael would have been a great ambassador for the sport. He’s also a great manager.”
McLaren was “attractive” to every driver
Häkkinen’s championship win in 1998 ushered in a new era of Formula 1 cars with leaner, more agile machines and ended a six-year streak of Williams and Benetton titles.
With Adrian Newey at the heart of the McLaren one-two, Haug believes the team would have caught the attention of any driver, even Schumacher’s.
“In theory it could have happened, but it didn’t come together,” added Haug.
“It is what it is, but it’s not something that was fully in the log. We were really good in ’98.
“The new formula, Adrian Newey’s car, was attractive to every driver and Michael could have won the championship earlier, we know that.
“He could have won in ’99 because of his accident and we could have won in 2000 with no failures or whatever. It was a great time and it was a very intense fight, best described by the 2000 race at Spa with the two guys “I think if you asked them which driver you would rate the best. I think you both mentioned the other guy. “
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