Michael Schumacher The Great Debate

Michael Schumacher The Great Debate

Michael Schumacher is on the verge of winning his Seventh Grand Prix championship. When he won the sixth he broke Juan Fangio's record of five championships, which was incidentally one of the longest standing records in sport. He is one of the highest paid athletes in sport. He has a loving and stable family life that is centered around his wife Corinne. There has never even been a whiff of any off-the-field controversy for him. He brought back all the lost glory for Ferrari when it was contemplating its very existence in F1. He is the only driver to have won on each and every F1 racetrack in the world. He has conquered the veterans as well as the rookies. Yet he is not acknowledged as the best ever that the sport has seen.

There have been many pretenders to the throne of best ever - Fangio, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Giles Villeneuve and Mika Hakinnen. But the one man who seems to have spoiled it most for Schumacher is not even alive today - Ayrton Senna. Senna is nothing short of God in his country, Brazil. The genius had his life cut short in the horrific crash in a race that Schumacher eventually went on to win. Most observers choose to sit on the fence by pointing out that Senna and Schumacher did not race against each other enough to make it possible for a clear winner to emerge.

Michael Schumacher was born January 3rd, 1969, to parents Rolf and Elisabeth Schumacher, in Hurt-Hermulheim, Germany. When Schumacher was four years old, his father gave him a pedal kart that he fixed up for him, inspired by some men in the Schumachers' neighborhood who put a kart together themselves. When Schumacher was ten years old, Jurgen Dilk, a local businessman bought him a new kart and supported Schumacher, with Schumacher's trophies as "payment". . In 1984 and 1985, he became German Junior Champion and finished runner-up in the Junior World Championship. He then moved on to German Formula Three, where he was first introduced to Willi Weber, his long time manager. Soon afterwards he joined Jordan, in Formula 1. The rest as they say is history.

While Schumacher has played a huge role in the globalization of Formula 1 racing, his decade long domination has ensured that a bit of the excitement has got sucked out. His closest rival, Mika Hakinnen retired somewhat prematurely, almost an admission that he could no longer play catch-up. The amount of money in F1 has increased by several thousand percentage points since the arrival of Schumacher. The authorities have in the past surreptitiously tried to quell his domination by bringing in a number of rule changes. But he seems to have the ability to bend every new rule into his advantage. The introduction and the subsequent rescinding of the traction system and the change in the point awarding system was supposed to slow down Schumacher. It has not only brought him more victories but has also ensured that his partner - Rubens Barichello finishes on the podium more often.

Michael Schumacher has a number of intrinsic strengths that makes him so formidable. He is easily the most ruthless and aggressive driver on the circuit; he has no qualms creating situations that are conducive to accidents if he has to get his way. There is no one who comes close to him in wet-weather conditions. Apart from the fact that he is a great racing driver, he understands all the factors that go into a win. There is no one who understands a racecar better than him. His greatest strength is that he has the ability to motivate the entire team of Ferrari engineers and technicians to give him the fastest car possible.

Ferrari in its excitement to bend over backwards for him has created a few controversies. Schumacher always gets the first choice car. In the 2002 Austrian GP, Barichello was asked by Ferrari to deliberately slow down to ensure that Schumacher wins. There are rumors that he bought a seat for his brother Ralf on the BMW team. There have been allegations that he has engineered the team exits and entrances of his Ferrari teammates. Some of the older drivers who have now retired make claims that if they had a car that was similar to the one that Schumacher has, they would have been more successful.

These are reasons why people have not officially coronated him as the best ever in the sport but they pale when compared to the magnificence of his achievements.