Schumacher's first title success: Twenty years on

Michael Schumacher became Formula 1 world champion for the first time twenty years ago today. It started a continuing success that lasted for over a decade, picking up another six titles along the way and finishing with 91 victories.

But 1994 was when he rose up to be king in a season that was tragic, controversial and epic. Everyone expected Ayrton Senna to dominate this season when he joined Williams but he got a surprise when Schumacher in the Benetton was immediately on the pace.

It's such a shame we only had one head to head confrontation that year. The opening race in Brazil was possibly the best race of the year as Schumacher tracked Senna down and began pressuring him. In what would become a trademark, Schumacher got ahead in the pit stops after setting some extraordinary lap times to exit in the lead. Senna tried to get back at him but spun into retirement.

It was a marker, a new challenger in town ready to take the fight to the expected champion. That we didn't get that fight is immensely sad after Senna died at the San Marino Grand Prix. Senna's team mate Damon Hill took up the baton and gave it his best shot, getting to within one point by the final race.

Senna had suspected Benetton to be running illegal traction control and launch control, although the software was found it wasn't proved it was used. Ross Brawn and Pat Symonds technical director and engineer at Benetton both say they didn't run it. But that was just the start of the issues that affected the team. Schumacher was disqualified from Silverstone after ignoring a black flag after he'd jumped ahead of Damon Hill on the formation lap. The team had told him to stay out but he was banned for two races afterwards.

He won the Belgian Grand Prix but again was disqualified for his car running too low to the ground after the wooden plank underneath the car had worn away too much. He had spun over kerbs during the race which likely resulted in the wear, but the stewards were having none of it and again another 10 points were lost handing the victory to Hill. 

Through it all Schumacher remained dignified and focused winning race after race and never commenting on his teams apparent indiscretions. He had eight victories in all, but perhaps his best drive was finishing second to Hill in the Spanish Grand Prix after being stuck in fifth gear for half the race.

Coming back from his ban, he immediately won before Hill brilliantly beat him in the rain in Japan at the penultimate race. So to Australia and the final race separated by one point. Schumacher and Hill immediately took the top two positions and drove away from the rest of the field, in a class of their own.

For most of the season, Schuey had been in a class of one, but finally as the season reached its climax Hill joined him there. They raced for 36 intense laps before for whatever reason, just as he'd pulled a bit of a gap to Hill, Schumacher went off. Hill saw the Benetton come back on the road not realising it was damaged, he immediately went for the inside of the next corner. Schumacher was already turning though, the two collided, the Benetton almost flipping before coming to rest out of the race.

Hill continued but the damage had been done, his suspension was gone and he sat forlornly in the pits. Had Schuey clashed deliberately? Judging from the future, perhaps, but I still believe it's arguable and he's never admitted to this one. 

Despite this, anyone looking to argue Schumacher didn't deserve the title has to remember he won eight out of the 12 races he could score in. In two others he was disqualified and a further two, harshly banned. Hill had 16 races to fall one point short.

As I've said, Schumacher truly emerged as the next major driver in Formula 1 during 1994, he was the one that all others would be judged by and that didn't stop until 2006 when he retired for the first time. Schumacher showed a flaw that would emerge every now and then over the years, but he also showed just how brilliantly he could drive on the edge. 1994 was a tough year for the sport, but through it emerged a new hero and one of the best showdowns the sport has seen.

If Abu Dhabi in just over a weeks time can come close to this race, it's going to be quite the ride.

#keepfightingmichael #forzaJules

Ten years since Schumacher's last title glory

The Belgian Grand Prix, Spa-Francorchamps, 29^th August 2004. Sitting second on the grid Michael Schumacher must have been thinking another win would come his way, after all he’d spent the previous five months almost winning everything; 12 wins from 13 races. Surely he’d wrap up his inevitable seventh title in victorious style.

It wasn’t to be, although it would have been so appropriate to claim his last title at the track which was always so intertwined with his career; his debut for Jordan in 1991, his first win a year later, a controversial disqualification, the defeat of Damon Hill on a wet track while on dry tyres, several classic strolls into the distance and another mesmeric destruction of the field in the rain.

Spa did give him the title, he finished second to Kimi Raikkonen after slipping back at the start, but after having won the title so many times, I guess in a year of supremacy the only way you’d want to clinch the championship is in style, and second wasn’t the style he was accustomed to.

Schumacher dominated the sport for so long it seems incredible that today marks ten years ago that he wrapped up his final and seventh world championship. Even now for those who have only a peripheral knowledge of the world of Formula 1 he is the name that is conjured up. So complete was his hold on the sport that many people thought he was still out there winning.

Perhaps that is because he so embodied everything about the world of Formula 1, its good and its bad points. He took it to a whole new level of professionalism and brought or established new things which many would now consider essential tools in the driver trade.

His absolute dedication to his fitness, his ability to motivate and be a full part of the team driving them in a positive direction, his constant search for perfection, being one of the first drivers who would twist and turn various instruments during the race which is now common place.

Schumacher was a class apart, his commitment to his goals was unmatched. Nothing was left unturned in his pursuit to be the best out there. Many people at the time became dissatisfied with his constant glory but I thought it was great to be watching a legend do his work right before us. His seven titles (1994, 95 & 2000-2004) and 91 wins could well be matched but it’s going to take someone of complete single minded determination to maintain a win rate such as Schuey had.

The alarming thing is he could well have won a lot more. The titles he missed out on could be said to be even better than some of the championships he took. To my mind at least his 1997 season was majestic. For a modern day comparison think of Fernando Alonso taking the championship to the wire in 2012 except that in ’97 the Ferrari was even more of a dog of a car.

He lead the points into the final race but obviously to the greater world his year was tarnished when faced with the possibility of losing to a car and driver which should have had the title sewn up several races ago if it weren’t for the efforts of Schumacher he swiped into the side of the Williams of Jacques Villeneuve.

A bad ending and one of his professional fouls which he actually admitted to, but to me it takes nothing away from the fact that he had no real right to be challenging for the title that year anyway. The following season he was up against the equally superior McLaren of Mika Hakkinen as the Williams had been before. Again he managed to take the title to the final race. Finally, while leading the 2006 Japanese Grand Prix ahead of Alonso he was just 17 laps away from taking a two point lead into the final race of the year when his engine failed. His luck which had always been so good was finally deserting him as his first career came to a close.

Of course it possibly should have continued at Ferrari for another year or two. For reasons which remain unclear Kimi was signed without Schumacher’s knowledge and he was ushered into a retirement he wasn’t really ready for. Can we speculate what might have happened? Well you can never be sure, but I’m pretty sure nevertheless. 2007 wouldn’t have been the three way classic between Kimi, Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. It would have been a final Schuey title.

The way those three capitulated and the fact Kimi and Felipe Massa were so evenly matched when Schumacher had mostly had the beating of Massa pretty comprehensively leads me to believe he’d have used the 2007 Ferrari to devastating effect. It certainly would have been interesting to witness the following year, Hamilton against Schumacher in equally matched cars. It's a missing highlight just like the lack of a proper full title fight between Schumacher and Ayrton Senna, it's added to the long list of what could have beens.

We caught a glimpse of how good it might have been in the 2011 Italian Grand Prix with an epic dual between Hamilton and Schumacher which was an utter joy and also beautifully aggressive. Because of course Schuey did retire at the end of 2006 before coming back in a blaze of glory in 2010 for Mercedes.

It didn’t work out quite as well as had been hoped, the luck I mentioned earlier was practically non-existant this time around. Despite Mercedes spawning from the ashes of 2009 championship winners Brawn GP, the car wasn’t up to it. In fact the car, the tyres, the competition had all moved on. Schumacher was also faced with ageing, even he couldn’t hold back time. There were stupid accidents, moments of indecision and several poor races. But there were highs too, that battle with Hamilton, fourth in Canada 2011, the pole lap of the season in Monaco 2012, his podium in Valencia and a comeback charge from the back to seventh in his final final race.

He said later his Mercedes comeback taught him how to lose, but you could see that mostly he was still enjoying it, I think gone was the total commitment to winning, he still wanted to certainly and some of his on track manoeuvres proved that, but he was a more relaxed individual in the public eye and seemed happy enough to be racing and working towards something.

The rewards never came but as we’ve come to appreciate, his comparison to Nico Rosberg is nothing at all to be ashamed of as Nico matches Hamilton in this years championship. Schumacher was often faster on race pace, so despite not demonstrating the devastating winning habit that characterised his first career it wasn’t quite as bad as some make out and when analysed properly doesn’t take anything away from his legacy. 

Not only is it ten years since his last title but later on this year it will be twenty since his first title. No one else has managed to sustain such comprehensive success to stay at the top of the sport for season after season, he will forever be talked about amongst the greats.

Of course there were the controversial moments, including questionable driving methods, favouritism from his team and the sports governing bodies. With regards to the team favouritism, he worked himself into that position so why should he not have benefitted? But these controversies are not what should be remembered about his career.

It should be just how exceptional he was, how much of a racer he was and how much he loved the sport he dominated. I remember the first time I saw him win live at the 1998 British Grand Prix in the pouring rain which encapsulated his career for me as it showed the racer and the controversy. It was mesmeric watching his hands dancing on the steering wheel as you could see him delicately balancing the car coming through club, driving hard through the spray but to win in the pit lane created uproar at the time.

You always knew something would happen when Michael Schumacher was racing. Since he retired for the second time he was still looking for challenges, looking for fun and thrills while also helping extensively with charities which wasn't overly publicised. I truly hope he can make as good a recovery as possible from the horrible skiing accident at the end of last year that left him in a coma for nearly six months. So now is the time to remember his success and continue to wish him well for more success in the future. Keep fighting Michael.

For some of my favourite Schumacher moments, please click here

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Will Fernando Alonso ever win another title?

Fernando Alonso is arguably the best driver currently racing in Formula 1. He’s a two time world champion who has proved his worth in the best cars and most certainly in many poorer cars as he drags them to wins and podiums they shouldn’t be achieving. He’s come so close to adding another title but missed out so often but with Ferrari continuing to squander the talents of their lead driver and the Spaniard certainly in the latter stages of his career will he get another opportunity to secure the third title he so desperately craves? 

Since he won his last world championship all the way back in 2006 for Renault, he has fought for a further three, all of which he perhaps should have won in 2007, 2010 and 2012. Two of which, and one in particular when he was driving a car which just didn’t deserve to be competing at the front, let alone nearly winning the world championship.

After winning for Renault he joined McLaren which was a tumultuous season and which quickly meant an exit back to Renault to have two relatively uncompetitive years where he scored just two wins and failed to win in 2009. But everyone knew he was still fighting as hard as he could mostly, especially when a sniff of a decent result came along.

Ferrari likes to have the best driver available and so rescued him for what would surely become one of the most successful partnerships in the sport. It hasn’t been. Admittedly it should have accrued him at least another two titles but that was more down to the driver than the team. This Alonso-Ferrari combination is now entering its fifth season together and if you go on the Michael Schumacher-Ferrari formula of success, it should be bearing the fruits of countless winners trophies. But it isn’t, it’s probably going to result in Alonso’s first winless season since the dark days of 2009, and that is just unacceptable to a man of Alonso’s quality and drive to succeed.

His lack of winning titles hasn’t done his reputation any harm at all. If anything it’s enhanced it greatly. 2012 should go down as one of the best examples of driving a near perfect season as anyone has ever seen only derailed by others mistakes, and I’m sure it will for the many knowledgeable fans out there, but for the casual fan the name written next to 2012 as the championship winner will be Sebastian Vettel’s and that’s all they’ll know.

I think it would be a tragedy for a driver the calibre of Alonso to end his career without another world title especially because in my opinion he is so much better now than when he won his first two titles. Is Alonso destined to be a driver remembered for just a couple of titles but mainly for outperforming his machinery? 

There’s something heroic about that, but in the end it’s not what gets you recognised as a true great around the world, success is the true barometer of a sportman’s legacy for many, and unfortunately for Fernando that’s been in short supply for too long. He needs another title, as if you cared to you could question his first two championships? When Kimi was a true speed king, he might well have won in 2005 if his McLaren hadn’t have been so unreliable. 2006 too, Schumacher probably should have won if it were not for an engine failure while leading at the penultimate race. 

I do tend to look at it another way though, 2005 he maximised his machinery and as is his way, built a championship, won when he could, maximised the points available if he couldn’t. He took the title with two races left to run. His 2006 title will always remain one which should be highly regarded as he battled an at his peak Schumacher to the last race of the season and beat him in pretty equal machinery. But since then he has played second fiddle to Vettel as the young German has exploited the maximum potential of the Red Bull machinery. Alonso has been the main guy to push Vettel, always the one challenging when perhaps he shouldn’t be. It's caused him much frustration to watch Vettel rack up the wins in a superior car when Alonso believes he's not as good as his four championships suggest.

On the Sky sports website, it was noted that that once again it was Alonso who was mixing it with this year’s dominant power unit Mercedes, but asked if he got much satisfaction from outperforming his car he replied tellingly. ‘"Not much," he sighed. "It's been five years like this. There is always satisfaction that everyone believes you are always performing at your best. There's the respect from drivers, Team Principals and fans for the job that you do. But I prefer to have no respect and to win more trophies."’

And there’s the rub of it. Alonso has made no secret of the fact that he deeply desires a third world title to put him amongst the greats like Ayrton Senna (although there’s plenty of great double world champions too), but as he approaches his 33rd birthday in just a month, time is running out for him to achieve his ambition.

You could say he has at least another four to five seasons but at the moment he is contracted at Ferrari until 2016, a team which should be producing consistently competitive cars but which have now been struggling to do that for over five years. Periodically Ferrari go through fallow periods, I don’t expect this one to last as long as the 21 year wait that Schumacher ended in 2000, but it’s not unreasonable to say it could be longer than four or five years.

Ferrari has been struggling with the calibration of their wind tunnel and even the supposed fix for this season doesn’t seem to be producing. They’ve brought in people like Pat Fry who designed for McLaren before and James Allison who was at Lotus and worked for Ferrari in the latter stages of the Ferrari steamroller of success. After the Schumacher era though, the core group of people that made the team work so harmoniously fell apart gradually, and it hasn’t had that same harmony since. It’s like trying to tape up a cut when it needs stitches; it’s not going to get better quickly. It’s taken Alonso to drag the limping horse to its feet these past few years and he continues to do that this season as he makes a mockery of the excitement that (an admittedly struggling) Kimi Raikkonen would challenge him as his team mate this year. 

Alonso publically maintains belief that Ferrari can step up next season, but it always seems to be next season at the moment with scarlet team. So where could he go? It’s well known his management team did a bit of investigating at Red Bull last season, but the likelihood is that with the immediate success of Daniel Ricciardo partnering Vettel, that driver combination will remain for a few years yet, although if Vettel doesn’t start beating Ricciardo a bit more you never know. 

McLaren have Honda coming on board next year, it’s a partnership that should work but McLaren aren’t exactly producing great chassis at the moment either and it’s bound to take a few years for this partnership to come to fruition. Despite saying things to the contrary I’m not sure Ron Dennis would want Alonso back after the 2007 spy gate affair lead to his acrimonious departure after just one season of a three year contract.

Mercedes? I think they’re quite happy with Nico Rosberg and Hamilton to be honest despite a Mercedes board member heaping praise on the Spaniard. I’m not sure any team would really want to put Alonso and Hamilton together again.  There really doesn’t seem anywhere open to him that would be immediately competitive. I’m afraid also that his reputation of throwing his toys out of his pram on occasion at Renault, the bust up at McLaren and the increasingly frosty relationship he seems to have at Ferrari has put people off him, he could disrupt the team especially if a team mate gets too close for comfort.

Unfortunately for Alonso he looks stuck at Ferrari as his best bet and that might mean he may never win a title again. As the younger generation become more established and he is in the latter years of his career, it becomes increasingly unlikely that a team will look to him to lead them for the future. After this season it will have been eight years since he won the world title. It wouldn’t be right for his career to be defined by early success and then a constant fight with sub-optimal cars that he out drove.

However, I’m not sure it would be right for him to jump into the best car and beat everyone either. No, for a fighter such as Alonso I think it would be far more poetic for him to create the perfect season as his legacy in a car just off the best. To drag and cajole it to perform miracles that no one on the grid (apart from perhaps Lewis when the mood takes him) could do. 

It’s obviously frustrated him to be given substandard machinery, after the epic 2012, last season he seemed subdued sometimes but who can forget that stare after he lost the title in the final round, it spoke of just total amazement and devastation, it was like he couldn’t quite believe that he could have lost after everything he’d done. He had put so much effort into 2012 that I think it was inevitable that after all he had done for Ferrari and they once again failed to keep up their side of the bargain that he would be sometimes below par. 

However he has regained the fight this year despite another poor car. I truly believe he can recreate a 2012 performance again. He might want to do it in the best car, but I’m not sure Ferrari can give him that for a while and there are no openings elsewhere. One more perfect season Fernando, he can be king again and he deserves to be.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Ayrton Senna

I remember April 11^th 1993 so well. It’s the only time I ever saw Ayrton Senna race live. The European Grand Prix at Donnington has gone down in history as one of the great races as Senna drove through a myriad of conditions to take his 38^th victory. There would only be three more brilliant wins before his untimely death twenty years ago on this day at the San Marino Grand Prix.

I’ve written before about Donnington here, but I realise how lucky I was to witness a true legend of the sport compete in one his best seasons despite not winning the championship. His skills in the wet that day and on so many other occasions were truly astonishing, he just left everyone behind. 

Senna was a fascinating racing driver; there was so much about him that really shone through to take him above other competitors. His total commitment, his belief in justice that often spilled into controversy and divided opinion about his racing ethics, his compassion to other drivers when out of the car, but his raw speed was something so exciting to witness.

The sad thing is there was so much still to come. His rivalry with Alain Prost is well documented. Prost was regarded as the best when Senna came into the sport. When he became Prost’s team mate at McLaren Senna set out to destroy him. He wanted to be known as the sport’s sole number one.

That he established himself so incontrovertibly and ruthlessly made him someone you just couldn’t ignore. But there was a stage of his career that wasn’t allowed to play out. How fascinating would it have been to see how he’d have reacted to the threat of Michael Schumacher whose star was quickly rising and who Senna knew was the next big name the sport would know? Could someone do to him what he did to Prost? Undoubtedly it would have been dramatic and surely controversial, controversy being the one word that has followed both these titans of the sport.

Senna brought racing into a new realm and is often cited as inspiration by today's stars such as Lewis Hamilton. But he arguably made Formula 1 a contact sport which can be seen by how drivers these days run everything so close to the edge when racing wheel to wheel. But Senna was also a keen advocate for safety. The aftermath of Senna and the often forgotten Roland Ratzenberger’s death at Imola made the sport so much safer over the years to the extent that there hasn’t been a fatality since.

With many people who die too soon their legacy is embellished. We remember only the good parts and raise them up to be more than they were. This is in part true of Senna, his legend now is almost like a demigod, but he was certainly fallible and that’s what made him so interesting and continues to do so for many people. 

His total commitment to driving was amazing, his technical ability brilliant but his emotions sometimes made him vulnerable and could push him to do things that he knew was wrong but he could justify as being right which is why we have Japan 1990. He crashed into Prost at over 150mph to right a wrong from 1989 when he believed the title was unfairly taken from him showing the dark side of himself when on other occasions he'd stop his car on track to make sure other drivers were ok. His was a complex character.

Personally I don’t think he was the best driver that ever competed I do think he was the most exciting though. The name Senna just conjures speed. When you heard him talk it was almost like a spiritual lesson. Listen to him reflect about his qualifying laps at the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix where he believed he was driving almost unconsciously such was his focus. He qualified two seconds clear of Prost that day, his own team mate. It was one of 65 pole positions to go with his 41 wins and three world championships that made him probably the fastest driver the sport has seen.

In Monaco he demonstrated that speed better than anywhere. He committed himself so much more around the tight confines of those streets than anyone ever has before or since to win six times in the principality. It was tragic that the next race after the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994 was Monaco. 

I remember sitting in front of the television twenty years ago and watching my hero die. It was one of the saddest moments I remember witnessing. After he crashed and the car came to a stop, it looked like his head moved. I thought he was about to get out of the car as they always seemed to.

There hadn’t been a death in 12 years at a race meeting until April 30^th and Ratzenberger crashed, I’d been too young to know it was possible. Now the next day the one driver who seemed invincible wasn’t getting out of his car and it was truly unbelievable.

So much good has come out of that tragic situation. The safety in Formula 1 is amazing now and the Ayrton Senna foundation which the man himself was already establishing was continued by his family to help under privileged children in Brazil.

However, Senna had created so much good before in his life and not just with his racing. But it’s in the car that I and many others remember him. That yellow crash helmet so distinctive in his early years in the black and gold Lotus or in the winning years in the red and white McLaren’s that he drove so hard, so fast and never giving up.

I remember him at Donnington, driving out of the spray towards me and shooting past for lap after lap, crushing the dominant Williams Renault cars and just leaving everyone else behind. That’ll always be the ultimate Senna memory to me. 

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Ferrari vs McLaren: The Greatest Rivalry

The Ron Howard directed movie ‘Rush’ about the 1976 Formula 1 season depicts the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda driving for McLaren and Ferrari respectively. It’s a great film, the on track action is exhilarating, and the performances great, particularly that by Daniel Brühl who plays Lauda.

But this isn’t a review of the film, great though it is and well worth seeing, this is about looking at a few more of those McLaren Ferrari rivalries, because in many ways they have come to define the sport. How appropriate that a Hollywood Formula 1 film should feature the two biggest names of the sport. These two teams have been competing now for 50 years; theirs is one of the most enduring conflicts in Formula 1 history and always gives that extra edge when they’re competing for the top prize.

1974 was when they first duelled properly for the title. Clay Regazzoni missing out for the Scuderia by three points as Emerson Fittipaldi took the Woking teams first drivers title and their first constructors crown too.

Niki Lauda hit back for Ferrari the following year trouncing Fittipaldi, then came the famous ’76 season in which Hunt and Lauda emerged as motor racing greats and firmly established the McLaren and Ferrari rivalry in the veins of the sport. Lauda’s come back from almost being burnt alive has to go down as the most incredible piece of heroism the Formula 1 world has ever seen. While Hunt's drive in Japan to secure third and the title in the final race was mesmeric too.

There then followed a period where the teams never really competed on an equal footing despite some brief scuffles such as Ferrari’s Michele Alboreto offering a vague sort of challenge to McLaren’s Alain Prost in 1985 . However, here in chronological order are some of the best McLaren and Ferrari scraps.

1990

This started out as an Ayrton Senna vs Alain Prost/McLaren vs McLaren war, but when Prost left to join Ferrari, the battle was joined between the two teams once again. Much has been written about the intense rivalry between these two greats. Needless to say it was never going to end well. Resentment and bitterness had been boiling away for well over a year by the time we reached the start of the 1990 season. 

All season long they battled, Senna starting off the best, but Prost steadily catching him until they reached the penultimate race in Japan. We all know what happened, as Senna deliberately crashed into Prost at well over 120mph to secure a title that looked like it was slipping away. 

1990 was a political/conspiratorial drama that was fuelled by a years worth of personal feuding that played itself out on the track in the most thrilling and ultimately dangerous way.

1998 – 2000

After years in the doldrums Michael Schumacher had lifted Ferrari once again to become title challengers. They were surely about to overcome Williams and finally take the title for the first time since 1979. They didn't figure on Adrian Newey leaving Williams and moving to McLaren to work more of his aero magic.

McLaren were dominant in 1998 and Mika Hakkinen had come of age. This was a friendlier and more respectful rivalry between the Finn and Schumacher, but it had its intensity too. Ferrari fought back after a poor start and Schumacher managed to take the title to the last race of the season in Japan. 

He stalled and a charge back was thwarted by a puncture, Hakkinen dominated the race and took McLaren back to the front for the first time since Senna won in 1991. Ferrari meanwhile were still waiting.

In ’99 Schumacher broke his leg and I think Hakkinen and McLaren believed they had it won. That season turned into less of a McLaren vs Ferrari battle and more into a Hakkinen vs himself battle. The lack of Schumacher seemed to dull him, and he had to fight hard to not let Ferrari’s number 2 Eddie Irvine snatch the title away. Another last race battle kept Hakkinen as Champion.

Finally it all came right again for the Scuderia. Schumacher dominated the early stages of 2000 for the Scarlet team, but a mid-season slump allowed Mika back in, and he was leading the title chase with three rounds to go. Schuey struck back though, and at the penultimate race, again in Japan, he could wrap up the title. 

What followed was a performance by two drivers who were just on a completely different level than the rest of the field. They tore away, and it was only a spit of rain that turned it in Schumacher’s favour to end 21 years of hurt for Ferrari; a tremendous way to win.

2003

Schumacher had now gone onto dominate the next couple of years, but a new Finnish superstar Kimi Raikkonen had arrived on the scene and was showing just how good he could be. Despite taking only one win to Schumacher's six he took the then five time champion to the last race in Japan. 

Kimi went full tilt at his first chance of glory while it looked as if Schumacher crumbled; eventually though second wasn't enough and Schumacher managed to just about scrape a point to secure his sixth crown.

2007

Kimi was now at Ferrari but this season was more about McLaren vs McLaren again, as Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton went head to head. It was a messy season with the spy-gate affair going off and Alonso falling out with the team, it was a drama you couldn’t take your eyes off. So inward was their battle they forgot about Raikkonen who stole the championship from them by one point at the final race in Brazil. McLaren and Ferrari took a clean sweep of victories that year.

2008

This was an equally dramatic season as the one before, but it came down to Lewis Hamilton for McLaren vs Felipe Massa for Ferrari. They both had their share of glory and of woes, but this season between the two teams was a friendly battle, but no less intense. 

In fact 2008 was perhaps the most dramatic finale to a Formula 1 season ever. Massa had won his home race in Brazil superbly and with Hamilton lying sixth as they’d entered the last lap, he’d also won the championship. But the rain was falling, Toyota driver Timo Glock had stayed out on dry tyres, and Lewis was catching catching catching. On the last corner of the last lap Lewis passed him for fifth and so won the crown in the most amazing way. 

The Lost Years

Since then we haven’t had a good McLaren vs Ferrari battle. We should have done, in 2010 Lewis was involved in the title fight to the last race with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber as well as Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso but he never had a chance. In 2012 too Lewis should have been a challenger, but his team sadly let him down, an Alonso/Ferrari against Hamilton/McLaren would have been spectacular as some of their all too brief on-track battles have since demonstrated.

But sometimes other teams come to the fore, Red Bull being the latest, but soon McLaren and Ferrari will recommence battle and the oldest rivalry in the sport will be fighting for the grand prize once again.

Senna

I was lucky enough to see the Senna film a few weeks ago in a rather plush cinema in Hampstead. Watching his life unfold it reminded me of my first Grand Prix. It’s not often you get to see your heroes at their very best, especially one as gifted as Ayrton Senna, but this is something I’ll appreciate forever.

I was 10 years old in 1993 and I remember sitting in my Grandpa’s living room in Leeds watching qualifying for the European Grand Prix at Donnington. I was looking forward to the race, all weather reports indicated it was going to be a wet race which increased my excitement. My favourite driver was great in the wet, Ayrton Senna was absolutely awesome in the wet.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I was told I wouldn’t be able to watch it. Apparently we were going to be out for the race. If memory recalls correctly I was probably about to complain and ask if I could stay home until my Dad took out an envelope. Inside were tickets to the race, I found it very hard to utter a word for a while after.

On a cold damp April morning, having hardly slept we arrived at Donnington just as the morning warm up commenced. I raced down to the side of the track on a little straight just past the Craner Curves, it was only half an hour, but it was immense. I hadn’t appreciated just how loud and fast these cars were in real life.

There are many articles that document this race. All I remember is staying in exactly the same spot through the entire Grand Prix. The rest of my family had a wonder around the track but I didn’t want to miss a lap. At the start they flashed by in an instant, but I’d spotted the bright yellow crash helmet of Senna and he was already making the moves that history would say was one of the greatest opening laps of all time.

Through rain, sun, four pit stops no one could live him, not his greatest Formula 1 rival Alain Prost, not Michael Schumacher who at the time I thought would surely be Senna’s next challenge. He literally disappeared in to the distance, and I stared intently not wishing to miss a moment. On his victory lap he waved to the crowd, I waved back as he slowly drove past, obviously elated. I couldn’t believe my first race and my favourite driver had won. I was already asking my Dad if we could go to the British Grand Prix in 1994 to see him again.

This is how I’ll remember Senna. For all his faults, he had a natural gift that he pushed to the limit, sometimes beyond. His drive and passion as a racing driver is what I’ll remember.  Not his death, not his crashes with Prost, but when I was 10, I saw him lap after lap, the yellow crash helmet appearing through the spray, driving with skill no one else could match. To paraphrase Senna, to me if felt like ‘pure racing’. Like the film, it was beautiful to watch.

If you were a fan, or if you never witnessed him racing at the time, I urge you to go and see the film. It’s not just a racing film, but about a person who appreciated life and made the most of what he made come his way. It’s about the life of one of the best sportsmen, one of the greatest most driven people the world has ever seen.