Blog:Ross Brawn move for Michael Schumacher prompted by desperation but could prove to be inspired
The Michael Schumacher “story” — the one about him making a sensational comeback to full-time race driving in Formula One, just won’t go away, will it?Mbt shoes
Everywhere you look, there is more speculation about the apparent return of the German legend and the prospect that he might decide to rekindle his hugely successful working relationship with Ross Brawn, the team principal of Mercedes Grand Prix.
Just on Friday came more “evidence” for the case that says Schumacher is coming back. A prominent German newspaper reported that Brawn has formally offered the seven-time world champion a contract for 2010 at a relatively modest annual salary of €7 million (about £6.3 million). That will have given the most successful Formula One driver of all time something to mull over as he and his wife, Corina, hosted their annual Christmas gathering for friends and associates in Switzerland on Friday night.
But what is this really about? Would Schumacher have been a possibility for a seat at Mercedes had the team kept hold of Jenson Button, as they always planned to do? The unfortunate truth for Brawn and Nick Fry, Mbt shoe his chief executive, is that their pursuit of Schumacher has only come about because they have made such a mess of their driver strategy for next season. They made a colossal mistake in letting Button go to McLaren (and Button made a mistake of similar proportions in allowing McLaren to turn his head).
No one seriously imagined Schumacher would be a target for Brawn and Fry in the closing weeks of their phenomenally successful first season as an independent team.
My guess is that when the time came to start talks with Button, they concluded that he had no serious alternatives other than to stay with the team that had made him world champion. On that basis, they got rid of Rubens Barrichello — which now looks hasty and ill advised — allowing the Brazilian to sign a deal with Williams, Mbt sale and made Button a derisory opening offer of £4 million.
The Englishman called their bluff. He started talking to McLaren, who saw a golden opportunity to get their own back on Brawn for snatching their main sponsor and partner, Mercedes. By the time Fry and Brawn had woken up to what was happening, and that Button was serious about leaving, it was too late.
With Nico Rosberg signed and their options for the second seat fast diminishing, Brawn, Fry and their new partners at Mercedes have allowed the Schumacher speculation to run out of control to help cover up their miscalculations, or they have concluded that, even at 41 next month, Schumacher is the man they need. If it is all a smokescreen and there is no chance of them getting him, you would have thought that, by now, Schumacher would have said something to put an end to it. So, on balance, it looks as though they really are trying to get him.
Rosberg, although fast, is inconsistent and not regarded as a strategically astute operator in the mould of a Fernando Alonso or . . . a Schumacher. He has also never won a race in 70 starts. Mbt shoe What Brawn desperately needs is thus as much Schumacher’s race-winning and championship-winning skills as his unrivalled ability at developing a car and leading a team, something he tends to do naturally. They could have got this, in diluted form, from Barrichello and from Button; if they don’t get Schumacher, they will not get it from their only other realistic choice, Nick Heidfeld.
Is Schumacher deluding himself in thinking that he can make a comeback, three years after he last drove a Formula One car in anger? Like Damon Hill, above, I tend not to think so. Schumacher is no ordinary sportsman raging against the dying of the light. He is a driven individual, who, perhaps more than any recently retired driver, has the durability, the fitness, and the desire to get back in the cockpit and make a go of it. As Hill suggests, this might be an opportunity that Schumacher has identified, not to wreck an amazing career record, but to improve it — not necessarily with race wins and a championship — but in the way he conducts himself.Mbt.com
Tags: Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn
