Michael Schumacher comes home to F1

Fit, focused and desperate to race – The German F1 driver is preparing to fight for an eighth title with Mercedes GP after three years’ absence from the sport ##The 41-year-old German formula one driver Michael Schumacher and his teammate Nico Rosberg at the presentation of the new Mercedes GP team in Stuttgart.Photograph: ReutersHis back as straight as a guardsman’s, his chin – that caricaturist’s delight – jutting out from beneath the cap bearing the logo of his personal sponsor, with a purposeful gleam in his eye and super-confidence radiating from every pore, Michael Schumacher strode back on to the world stage today. So begins a comeback to match that of Lance Armstrong, another seven-times champion, and – some time in the future – of Tiger Woods, another contemporary exponent of crushing dominance.Only Italians could dispute the suggestion that, almost 20 years after he made his Formula One debut, Schumacher’s reappearance as a member of the new Mercedes-Benz team means that he has finally found his way home. After a single weekend with Jordan, a few years with Benetton and a sporting lifetime with Ferrari, at last he finds himself in a grand prix team where at least some of the workers speak his native tongue.”Quite a lot of my history and quite a lot of my heart is red,” he said, making a diplomatic reference to his 11 seasons with Ferrari. “You can’t forget or deny all the good moments we had together. Now we will compete against each other, but that doesn’t mean we have to forget the past.”With Ross Brawn, who supervised all his seven championships with Benetton and Ferrari, he has always spoken the same language. When Brawn discovered that Jenson Button, his new champion, had made what amounted to a state visit to the McLaren factory in the middle of negotiations last November, his first instinct was to phone his old colleague and suggest that it was time for all the light-hearted discussions they had shared during Schumacher’s three-year retirement to bear fruit.”Almost every year we have had contact,” Schumacher said. “Sometimes it was serious, sometimes it was a joke. When he went to Honda he suggested there was an option, but I wasn’t ready at the time.”Both men confirmed that there had been a conversation at the last race of the season in Abu Dhabi, before problems emerged over the renewal of Button’s contract…

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Posted by admin 27 January 2010

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