Review "a surprising profile of the most successful Formula One driver of all time. Dozens of intimate photos and a series of candid interviews bring out the reassuringly human personality behind that Teutonic countenance" -- Daily Express"gloriously unguarded" -- Daily Telegraph Read more From the Inside Flap ichael Schumacher has dominated Grand Prix, winning the FIA World championship in five of the last nine seasons. In 2001 / 2002 he broke almost every motor racing record and is now the most successful Formula One driver of all time.<br><br>Now, in the official Schumacher book, we discover for the very first time the real Michael Schumacher -- through extensive first person material, as well as a narrative by Sabine Kehm, a journalist, colleague and friend of Schumacher. Fantastic new photographs from renowned European photographer, Michel Comte, give us new insight into the man and his life. For the first time the private man who gives nothing away and the driver who takes no hostages relaxes and opens up. This book will be a real surprise to all fans of Formula One and anyone who's wondered just what goes on behind the superhero's mask.<br><br>We learn about Schumacher's past, the secrets of his extraordinary success, his family, his view of other drivers and the state of F1, his opinions Read more From the Back Cover "a surprising profile of the most successful Formula One driver of all time. Dozens of intimate photos and a series of candid interviews bring out the reassuringly human personality behind that Teutonic countenance" -- Daily Express"gloriously unguarded" -- Daily Telegraph Read more About the Author Michael Schumacher is undoubtedly the greatest Formula One driver of his generation and is one of the most celebrated and well-paid sportsmen in the world. He has won 5 World Championships. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Racer: A Dramatic Career His head felt congested. Heavy eyes, runny nose and husky voice, almost too deep for a 22 year old. The young Formula 3000 driver had arrived at the youth hostel fighting off a heavy cold. It was the end of August 1991, the night before his first weekend of racing in Formula One. He was not well, though he would never show it. Gritting his teeth, he got on with the job in hand. 'I felt rotten. I was ill with a bad cold, something I often had due to the regular long-haul flights to and from Japan. I knew that this wasn't the best state to be in with the weekend of the race coming up. And I wasn't sleeping well either. It wasn't because of the race itself, but because I had been driving Formula 3000 in Japan, and jet-lag was waking me up in the middle of the night. When I arrived that evening in Spa, I felt weirdly restricted. I had that sense of tunnel vision, when you are only aware of those essential things you have to concentrate on.' One would assume that such days would be engraved on the memory, leaving impressions which would last forever but Michael's memory of that crucial weekend is unusually patchy. They arrived at the youth hostel in the dark and spent the night tossing and turning on camp beds. He remembers there were strange tiles on the walls, 'just like in a school'. The atmosphere was cold and unwelcoming. 'Everything was a funny greeny-blue.' Michael doesn't even remember that he slept in the same room as his manager, Willi Weber. It demonstrates how Schumacher functions, how he functioned even then: never bother with trivialities, or unimportant details, only the essentials count. You have to focus on them, with all the strength at your disposal. It was pure coincidence that Spa-Francorchamps would be Michael Schumacher's first race. Eddie Jordan urgently needed a driver for his up-and-coming team because his official driver, Bertrand Gachot, had suddenly found himself in jail after an altercation with a London taxi driver. Schumacher was summonsed thanks to his manager Willi Weber, the man with whom he shared the room that weekend in the youth hostel, the man who had given him a drive in his Formula Three team, the man who has subsequently guided Michael's career with such care and foresight, constantly pestering Eddie Jordan. The situation was helped by the fact that Michael's other patron, Jochen Neerpasch, was able to bring to bear the illustrious name of Mercedes. But as much as anything else it was the result of the impression made by the young Formula 3000 driver in testing at Silverstone. Looking back, however, many Formula One fans regard the fact that Spa was Michael 's first race as anything but coincidence. They see it as somehow predestined, because Schumacher immediately felt himself completely at home on the impressive Ardennes circuit, and because it seems as if this circuit and Michael's Formula One career are intertwined in some indefinable way, as if his life as a racing driver revolves round the enormous corners of this track which he loves so much. In Spa he has experienced glittering highpoints, as well as nerve-shattering crises. 'This circuit is something very special, it has a character all its own. It is a real challenge for every driver, it demands every ounce of your ability. It is far and away my favourite circuit.' Michael is not easily impressed, but when he is talking about the one time Spa-Francorchamps Grand Prix Spa, he becomes lyrical and his eyes brighten. Perhaps Michael's devotion to Spa stemmed from the fact that he gained his first impressions of the circuit on a bicycle. You get a much more immediate and physical sense of its tremendous difficulty on a bicycle. Never to have driven a circuit like this before is a real competitive disadvantage, and the crafty Weber had assured Jordan that the difficult circuit was indeed a part of his protégé's repertoire - a little white lie. 'There was a story that Willi was asked if I knew the Spa track, and he said that I had already driven it, which wasn't true. Luckily, they only asked Willi. I just kept quiet and said nothing,' Michael laughs. So he went and pedalled round the whole hilly track on his bike, and fell in love with it. 'The first corner is not particularly demanding, in a car you brake at about 80 metres, the track is a bit bumpy and drops away to the inside a little at the end, which is why it's easy to lock the right front wheel. And then it's downhill for a while, and I still remember how incredibly surprised I was at its steepness. When you see a track on the TV screen, you don't get a proper impression, especially in Spa, of how hilly it is. Approaching Eau Rouge, it is phenomenal how the angle changes from the entry to the exit. It's mainly Eau Rouge that makes Spa so special. That hollow is a bit like driving up a wall. It climbs and slopes, uphill and down dale. It's totally unique, and very demanding. The only similar experience is Suzuka, and parts of the NŸrburgring, but there the corners are too flowing and wide. If you don't get your line right at Eau Rouge, or are too slow, you're scuppered. 'Or take Suzuka where there are a number of S-bends and if you get it right, you can make up a lot of time. On one Suzuka corner, the 130 R, you get a speed reading at the exit and once I clocked 306 kilometres an hour. Moments like that are absolutely tremendous. These high-speed corners make enormous demands on you, but if you get it right, it's a fantastic kick. On the S-bends, you get into a rhythm and feel as if you are really flying. With the speedometer registering an extreme speed you get the sense that you have almost achieved perfection. To drive into one of the ordinary chicanes, braking and then driving through is nothing special because there is hardly anything you can do wrong. Perhaps one of your wheels could stick, and then you could lose control of your steering, but it's the high-speed corners which are the test. They are spectacular and you experience extreme lateral-G force. You have to brake and keep the car under control and you're driving the whole time at the limit. 'Race driving is not a test of courage or a feat of strength. You have to be able to tell whether the car can take a particular corner at a particular speed or not. It is up to you to know how you take this corner but if you need courage to do it, you have a problem. It's about knowing where the limits lie. And Spa is unique in this respect because it has combinations of demanding corners, which require a particular kind of skill. And the landscape in which it is located is unbelievably beautiful.' It was the first practice session, on that Friday before Michael's Formula One debut. He was standing on the lorry in which the screws and spare parts are stored, right at the back and a long way from the door. Angular face, keeping his thoughts to himself. With a determined look, he slipped the fireproof vest rapidly over his head, pulled up the green overall, put his arms into the sleeves, and did up the zip. On the collar flap, the name of fellow team-mate de Cesaris had been covered over with masking tape, and Schumacher's name written on it. There was no money for an overall of his own, and anyway who knew how long this driver would be in the team? Slowly and carefully Michael folded the end of one collar flap over the other. The overall was a bit too big, a bit too baggy, but who cared. Cut out what's unimportant, concentrate on the essentials. Michael looked up briefly at the roof of the lorry and took a deep breath. Then he straightened up and walked with rapid strides across to the garage. By the end of the weekend's racing the experts had a new name to conjure with - Michael Schumacher. He was clearly someone to watch; a driver who was going places. He had come through the weekend of the race as if to confirm his manager's statement that he had often been round the Belgian circuit. It was a hint of what was to come. In his first Formula One qualifying session ever, the unknown youngster sensationally fought his way to eighth place, springing a major surprise at the dangerous Blanchimont corner. 'We worked hard on the tuning of the Jordan so that I was able to take Blanchimont at full throttle. That gained us valuable time. You can do that with Formula One cars today but it wasn't always possible then.' And with this daring stroke Michael won himself the attention of the established drivers. On Sunday the race itself was over for him after only 500 metres due to a damaged clutch. 'I had a very good start and immediately moved up to fifth or so, and wondered why it was all so simple, and why the others all braked so early. As a result I was nearly the cause of the first accident, a frightening moment at the first corner which immediately cost me another place. But then straight after, it was finished: a big disappointment.' Talking today about 25 August 1991, Michael is not particularly nostalgic. Any such feelings are outweighed by his disappointment at having to drop out so early. His nostalgia is reserved for another moment, just a week before, when he sat for the first time in one of the world's most powerful cars on his first test day as a Formula One pilot. 'When we drove over to the track for the first test drive I had a rather funny feeling in my stomach,' Willi Weber recalls. Michael felt much the same. 'When I got into the car for the first time at Silverstone, that was the really special moment. Much more so than the race at Spa, when I just turned up and drove. That was nothing much to speak of. But the test beforehand was an incredible experience, and a much greater challenge. It was much tougher because I had absolutely no idea at that point what the future held for me, and how I would cope. I can remember the first three laps very clearly. On the first lap I thought: oops, there goes your Formula One career, it's over. The car was incredibly impressive, so powerful, and at the same time difficult to drive. On the seco... Read more
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