Jammer, heel erg jammer.

[tommaso]

Ook ik schaar me bij diegene die respect hebben voor de prestatie's van de rijder Schumacher.
Ook ik ben geen fan van de persoon Schumacher waar ik me altijd vreselijk aan kon ergeren.
Is in de loop der jaren overigens minder geworden.
Mijn nieuwe 'held' als opvolger van de persoon Schumacher is nu Alonso geworden.
Als rijder zie ik liever anderen zoals in de eerste plaats Massa en ook Raikkonen.

Gek genoeg heb ik juist veel meer waardering voor de persoon Raikkonen gekregen na een vakantie in Finland.
Dan leer je toch de landsaard kennen en de mensen.
Hij komt inderdaad heel saai en zakelijk over maar dat zit nu eenmaal in de Finnen [niet allemaal inderdaad].
Massa is een typische Braziliaan die echter zonder veel geld heel hard heeft moeten knokken om in de F1 terecht te komen.
Die eerste overwinning was dan ook heel emotioneel.

Wel hele mooie momenten gisteren na afloop van de race toen Schumi al het Ferrari personeel ging bedanken , zijn vrienden.
En dan Luca de Montezemolo die hem terecht in de armen valt. Mooie Italiaanse beelden.

Jaren geleden ben ik een keer een 'weekendje' naar Marannello geweest toen Irvine wereldkampioen kon worden.
Helaas werd hij dat niet maar maakte wel de sfeer mee met 50.000 man die de hele nacht voor de Ferrari fabriek naar tv schermen keken.
Ging op zaterdagmorgen in de 33 naar Maranello en kwam zondagmiddag weer terug. Waanzin.

Ben wel bereidt dit trucje nog een keer te gaan doen als de beslissing hopelijk de laatste wedstrijd gaat vallen.
Zeker na het wereldkampioenschap voetbal voor Italia te hebben gevierd in het Belgische Genk.
Een dubbel kampioenschap en erebetoon aan de rijder Schumacher op Ferrari grond zou wel aardig zijn.

[Giulia2000TS]

Statistically the greatest driver the sport has ever seen, Schumacher has, over the past 16 years, set a new standard to which younger drivers can only aspire.

Helamaal mee eens, juist gevoel voor understatement. Genoeg is genoeg!






Ben benieuwd wie de beslissing heeft genomen.... Zou Ferrari ingezien hebben dat.....

[bert]

Schumacher heeft bij Ferrari orde gebracht in een chaotisch maar desalniettemin topteam dat in de jaren 93-94-95 voorin het veld was te vinden. Hij heeft wel degelijk topmensen om zich heen verzameld en meegenomen naar Ferrari en dat is waarschijnlijk een van zijn krachten. Het is een veel completere rijder dan bijvoorbeeld J.Villeneuve maar Ferrari is/was veel completer dan BAR.


Lauda was destijds de juiste rijder voor Ferrari maar de situatie is dat Luca di Montezemolo het team opnieuw heeft neergezet en aandrong op een veel modernere Ferrari. Rijders als Ickx hebben heldendaden verricht met de zeer zware en krachtige Ferrari V12 maar waar het chassis enkel iets was om de banden aan te monteren.

[tommaso]

Schumachers' carriere , een bloemlezing:

Monaco was rocked by a Mon-Schuun on Saturday, when Michael Schumacher seemed to deliberately make a mistake in the dying minutes of the final qualifying session in order to block the track, robbing his rivals of a chance to better his pole-setting time.

The incident was followed by universal contempt and outrage.

Renault team boss Flavio Briatore was beyond himself, remonstrating to a TV camera: "He parked the car! He parked the car! But because of where we are (Monaco), Ferrari is untouchable. But you could see, he just parked the car!"

Williams test driver Alex Wurz immediately - and loudly and clearly - condemned the "accident" as fake.

And so did virtually every other soul in the pitlane, except those clad in red.

Jacques Villeneuve was vociferous and said that if it really was a driver's mistake, Schumacher should hand in his super-license as driving of such poor quality would even have embarrassed Yudi Ide, the Japanese Aguri Suzuki driver whose super-license has recently been revoked.

Fresh in Villeneuve's memory is the incident at Jerez in 1997, of course, when Schumacher tried to clinch the world championship by running the Canadian off the track.

Villeneuve, needing to finish in front of Schumacher and clearly being faster than the Ferrari driver in the middel part of the race, dived up the inside of a corner called Dry Sack in a move that clearly would have sealed Schumacher's fate.

Having promised with great piety, in the lead-up to the race, that he would not use foul tactics to secure the title, Schumacher reneged on his promise and simply turned his Ferrari into Villeneuve's Williams, as the latter scythed up his inside.

As luck would have it, the culprit got the short end of the stick on that occasion, Schumacher's mount bouncing off Villeneuve's, straight into a sand trap where it stalled.

A bemused Martin Brundle could not refrain from declaring that Schumacher's dirty tricks "didn't work" on that occasion.

Dirty tricks

Brundle was, of course, referring to the infamous moment three years prior to the Dry Sack incident, when Schumacher pulled pretty much the very same move on Damon Hill.

On that occasion, in 1994 in Adelaide - also with the F1 driver's title at stake - Schumacher ran wide in his efforts to pull away from Hill.

Bouncing his Benetton off a wall to regain track and tarmac, Schumacher entered a 90-degree right-hander at the same moment as a fast-catching Hill, who tried to squeeze through on the inside.

The German, however, simply turned into Hill, breaking the Williams's front suspension and launching his own Benetton high into the sky.

Then he feigned innocence. The car was not handling too well after the thump on the wall, Schumacher explained.

It handled well enough to find and cripple the Williams, all right.

1997 incident

In 1997, in Spain, Schumacher came up with another gem of an excuse, after he had turned into another Williams, this time Villeneuve's.

"It was an instinctive reaction to protect my position, " he declared.

It took Damon Hill to point out that one's instinctive reaction is not to turn into an accident, but out of it.

Hakkinen

A year after Dry Sack, it was Mika Hakkinen's turn to be vulnerable as he sat on the grid in Japan.

Pole-sitter Schumacher, for sure, only had to brake early into a corner for Hakkinen to run into the Ferrari's back and break a front wing - which would have handed the title to the German on a platter.

But then the Schumacher stalled his Ferrari on the grid and had to start from the back. Any chance of deliberately interfering with Hakkinen's race had evaporated.

Would Schumacher have done it, though?

Prior to the race, Hakkinen intimated that he would take great care around Schumacher's car.

When they raced in F3, he said, he had won the first leg of the prestigious Macau GP with ease. Hakkinen thus only had to finish the second leg within four seconds of Schumacher, to win the event.

And there the Finn sat, comfortably on Michael's exhaust pipes until the German ran wide, coming onto the main straight.

Hakkinen moved to pass, but Schumacher blocked him straight into the wall.

Afterwards, Michael came over to apologize.

"I didn't see you," he said.

Good guy that he is, Mika accepted the apology - until he watched some TV in his hotel room, three weeks later.

To his astonishment, Schumacher was on the programme, telling German viewers how he had "moved to protect his position when he saw Hakkinen coming up the inside".

"I learnt something about Michael that day," Mika said back in 1998.

Another case

That message was re-inforced a year later, when Schumacher came back to F1 in Malaysia, after having broken his leg in a crash at Silverstone.

It was Schumacher's task - as a team player, which he had no option but to accept, as everybody else had always sacrificed for his sake, in the name of team unity and spirit - it was Schumacher's task to help Irvine to win the title.

On that occasion, the German did interfere, then, with Hakkinen's race. The Finn was so knackered afterwards, that he could not stand upright on the podium, having finished third behind the Ferrari's.

Everybody assumed that Mika was really tapped by the heat.

But Hakkinen revealed afterwards that it was probably the most difficult race of his life, as Schumacher - who was deliberately holding him up - brake-tested him continually in all kinds of corners.

"The fast corners were the most difficult," Mika declared. "I had to be super-vigilant, not to run into Michael's back." That was not, however, the end of Michael's Schu-nanigens.

In 2000 he nearly ran Hakkinen off the track on Spa's super-fast Kemmell-straight, by viciously moving over on his rival as the latter shaped up to pass Schumacher on the inside.

The cars nearly touched at speeds of 340 km/h, and Hakkinen - who had to jab his brakes and take evasive action - was mightily relieved that nothing untoward happened.

Not one to bury his bag of dirty tricks in a cupboard, Schumacher pulled the same move on Alonso, in 2004, on Silverstone's flat-out Hangar straight, nearly putting the Renault ace on the grass.

And then there was the "Schu-weave", F1's equivalent, one might say, of Muhammad Ali's "Ali-shuffle".

Whereas Ali used his shuffle - flashing his feet to and fro' at great speed, in a criss-cross style - to entertain and dazzle, Schumacher has unfortunately used his weaving to put outrageous blocking manoeuvres on opponents, especially at times when he pushed them up against a wall - amongst others his own brother at the Nurburgring.

Technical cheating

Also hovering over the Schumacher legacy are numerous allegations of technical cheating - like the traction control accusations of 1994, and also shaping the Jaboc-plank underneath the car for better aerodynamics - plus a general dissatisfaction with Schumacher's ethical code.

Passing pole sitter Damon Hill twice on warm-up laps at Silverstone, in 1994, didn't endear the German to British fans either. Nor did his victory in the pit lane, also in the British GP, after he benefited from passing under yellow flags.

The lists go on and on.

But blocking the track on purpose, like Michael did in Monaco last week, is no new trick in the German's armour-plated arsenal.

In Austria, in 2000, Schumacher lost a front wing during a first corner fracas. Not being able to continue, he simply drove his car to the middle of the track where he switched it off, hoping for a re-start.

Then, as now, the stunt failed.

But with one big difference: in the Principality, Schumacher got sanctioned for his sins.

Worse: the race stewards effectively accused him - in public - of cheating.

And cheating of the most insidious sort, feigning innocence after a coldly calculated plan to secure pole with an underhand move that would have pleased Don Corleone.

Such was the outrage on Saturday though, that the authorities were forced to investigate and act.

At long last then, Michael Schumacher got - in the view of many - his come-uppance.

[GiuliaCorse]

Respect kan ik voor hem wel hebben, hij heeft erg veel gewonnen en zowat erk record in de F1 wel gebroken.
Ik was/ben ook geen fan van "Shummi" maar het stukje hierboven eigenlijk onnodig.

@Jolinos, zo erg dat de avatar moest verdwijnen is het toch niet, je mag gewoon van hem blijven houden hoor

[Pietro Originale]

Agh, Senna was ook niet heilig, Alonso lijkt dezelfde streken te hebben.
Blijkbaar hoort het bij een wereldkampioen om bereid te zijn tot het randje - en soms er overheen - te gaan?