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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Schumacher’

In 1991, Belgian driver Bertrand Gachot was sentenced to two months in prison for spraying CS gas on a taxicab driver. The void left by Gachot at Jordan was the window of opportunity that propelled Michael Schumacher’s racing career. He made his debut at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1991 for Jordan. Exactly one year later at the same venue, he would win his first ever race – racing this time for Benetton.

He had to wait till the 1994 season to secure his first driver’s championship title. Another one followed in 1995. In the summer of 1996, he shifted to Ferrari who had last won the championship in 1979. After four unsuccessful years behind the wheel at Ferrari, he blew away all records winning five consecutive championships from 2000-2004. His last race was the 2006 Interlagos Grand Prix where he finished fourth.

But the mercurial genius was not to be away from the sport for long. In 2009, he returned to Ferrari as their technical advisor. In the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, Ferrari’s number one driver Felipe Massa suffered a serious injury. Schumacher was being readied by the Ferrari bosses to replace Massa till the end of the season. But the move ran into some legal wrangles and Michael decided against racing with a neck injury that he had suffered earlier in the year.

On 23rd December 2009, Schumacher announced that he would race in the 2010 season for the Mercedes Grand Prix Team alongside compatriot Nico Rosberg. Schumacher’s surprise re-entry to the sport has been compared to Niki Lauda’s return in 1982 and Nigel Mansell’s return in 1994. Will the undisputed king of motorsport still be a force to deal with in his second stint with Fomula One? If he does half as well as he had done in his heydays, the legend of Michael Schumacher would be embellished with another glorious chapter.