Moore77 wrote: ↑12 Sep 2020, 04:38
Moore77 wrote: ↑07 Sep 2020, 20:47
Let's put a bit of a death knell here to Schumacher's contractual No. 2 team mate myth.
Here is an interview with Ross Brawn from April 2007.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... ross-brawn
What about the role of Michael’s team-mates at Ferrari – Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa – and controversial races like the 2002 Austrian GP, when Barrichello reluctantly obeyed an order to move aside and allow Schumacher to win?
“The only contractual advantage Michael ever had over his team-mate was that he had first call on the spare car, and because of rule changes the spare car has not been an issue in recent years. But we would always take a decision in a race that we felt was best for Ferrari. Those decisions tended to favour Michael, because he was in the best position to win the championship – but it was never a case of Michael is the No 1 driver, so he has to get this or that.
“We had some difficult times with Rubens, who gave Michael quite a hard time competitively during his six seasons with us. If Rubens had been 20 points ahead of Michael in the championship, it would have been logical for all the strategy decisions to favour him. But it never occurred.
“That race in Austria caused a furore. But you have to remember that at that stage in the championship Michael had 44 points to Rubens’ six points, and of course we wanted to maximise Michael’s chances of the title. Championships have been lost in the past by a single point. We asked Rubens several laps before the end to concede position, but he wouldn’t until the last few hundred metres. These things are all discussed beforehand in the calm of the motorhome, so Rubens knew the score.
“But he’s a passionate guy, he was leading the race, and I can understand how he felt. Three races later (by which time Schumacher’s championship was almost, but not quite, clinched) we let Rubens lead Michael home in Germany.”
I remember some pages back, @Just_a_fan had snubbed the fact that it was Schumacher who brought Ross Brawn to Ferrari.
“Then I had my own problems with Benetton. At the end of 1995 I’d agreed to stay, on condition that I got total responsibility over the whole engineering side. Flavio agreed to that, but ultimately he didn’t implement it. F1 is pretty incestuous, and Michael got to hear I wasn’t happy. At the same time, he wasn’t happy with the technical structure at Ferrari either. Just before Monaco in 1996 I got a call from Willi Weber, asking if I’d like a chat. That’s how it started.”
Continuing on this... Ferrari even wanted to fire Jean Todt in 1996! Schumacher put his step down and retained Todt. So whoever that says, Schumacher didn't play a role in building that team of his, should stand corrected.
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/jean-t ... 53956.html
Jean Todt reveals Michael Schumacher saved his Ferrari career
However, it would have been different but for Schumacher’s intervention.
“It was during the 1996 season after we had a few retirements that there was pressure on me to leave,” explains Todt, 74.
“But Michael said ‘if Jean leaves I leave’. They did not want him to leave. They cared much less for me but Michael made his comments clear so I stayed.”
To be honest, that '96 season was bad... very bad... the car incorporated "innovations" like the failed double floor, they made the headrests in some kind of wind scoop and reliably was so poor that it was almost a succes when they completed the lap to the grid. Plus, all un Ferrari like they went for a V10 that underperformed the V12 from the year before.
and those first few seasons of Todt at the helm were also very underwhelming in results. Lots of reliably issues, design faults and lack of speed.
That Schumacher got some decent results, was all up to him, not the car nor the team.
I think Bino is referring to those years a lot internally
