Schumacher in a Ligier? F1's most unlikely testing stories

Beyond the endless amount of laps and long hours of work, there is something quietly fascinating about Formula 1 testing.

Away from the cameras, the crowds and the pressure of race weekends, curious things tend to happen.

Deals are hatched, futures are decided, and occasionally, for political reasons or simply opportunity, a driver ends up behind the wheel of a car that has absolutely no business being associated with them.

These are some of the best examples.

Michael Schumacher in a Ligier (1994)

Few images in F1 history are quite as incongruous as the reigning world champion, fresh from his first title, climbing into a car run by a team he had never driven for, and promptly going almost a second faster than the man whose job it was.

That is essentially what happened at Estoril in December 1994, when Michael Schumacher tested a Ligier JS39B powered by a Renault engine.

The reason was thoroughly unglamorous: Renault wanted him to try out engine maps in preparation for 1995, but it was too complicated to install the Renault into the 1994 Benetton, so the Ligier – already running Renault power – was simply the most convenient vehicle available.

What happened next was rather less convenient for Olivier Panis. Schumacher was nearly a full second faster than Ligier’s regular driver.

Panis later lapped within 0.13 seconds of Schumacher’s time on subsequent days when the German wasn’t present, which suggested the gap was not entirely down to the machinery.

The telemetry apparently revealed something remarkable about Schumacher’s driving technique, though quite what has never been publicly confirmed.

It was a brief, strange afternoon in Portugal, and it told you everything you needed to know about the man.

Kimi Räikkönen’s secret Sauber test (2000)

One of the great origin stories in Formula 1 testing history begins with a code name.

Peter Sauber had been tipped off about a young Finn who had competed in just 23 car races, most of them in Formula Renault.

The suggestion was preposterous by normal standards: nobody made it to Formula 1 in 23 races.

Sauber arranged a test at Mugello anyway – but with Ferrari and McLaren also at the circuit that week, he had no intention of letting either of them know what he had found.

“We had to find a name for the driver to keep his identity a secret,” recalled Sauber’s then-technical director Willy Rampf. “We could not say ‘this is Kimi Räikkönen‘ when referring to him for things like the seat fit, so we called him ‘Eskimo’.”

There was one further complication: Räikkönen was too young to drive legally in Italy at the time, so a Sauber mechanic had to go to the airport to pick him up.

None of this administrative inconvenience mattered much once he was in the car. On just the second day of the test, Räikkönen lapped half a second quicker than regular driver Pedro Diniz.

The numbers were so alarming that Michael Schumacher — also present in the paddock — walked over to the Sauber garage to ask who this “Eskimo” was, and reportedly told the team’s track engineer that they must sign him immediately: “He will be very, very fast.”

“Why was he called Eskimo? Because the sponsor that paid for the test was an ice cream manufacturer from Scandinavia,” Sergio Rinland, then chief designer said.

“I remember after the test, Peter called us all into the machine shop and told us, we’re going to hire the Eskimo. And everyone burst out laughing.”

The FIA granted Räikkönen a superlicence on exceptional talent grounds despite his minimal experience, and the rest is history.

Alain Prost tests a Ligier in disguise (1992)

The Schumacher/Ligier story above had an uncanny precursor two years earlier, one with a far more intriguing subplot.

In early 1992, Alain Prost — four-time world champion, recently fired by Ferrari — was quietly exploring his options. One of them was an audacious plan: to test for, and possibly purchase, the Ligier team, with the idea of becoming a driver-owner.

To avoid alerting the press and rival teams he tested Ligier’s 1992 car incognito, wearing Erik Comas‘s crash helmet.

Comas revealed years later that he had not been given any testing mileage during the winter, presumably to make the ruse easier to maintain.

Prost lapped competitively, Ligier offered him a seat, and he eventually performed pre-season testing for the team in early 1992, but Ferrari paid him a significant amount of money to take the year off instead.

The parallel with Schumacher’s Ligier test two years later — both men champions, both at the behest of Renault’s political machinations, both in the same team’s car — is an remarkable coincidence.

Marcus Ericsson gives Brawn its last hurrah (2009)

The Brawn BGP001 is one of the most remarkable cars in Formula 1 history. Built in secret from the ruins of the Honda programme after the manufacturer’s abrupt withdrawal, it won the championship in its only season with Jenson Button at the wheel.

By the end of 2009, the team had been sold to Mercedes, and the BGP001 was effectively obsolete overnight.

Its final run that year fell to a 19-year-old Swede who had just won the Japanese Formula 3 championship.

Marcus Ericsson drove for Brawn GP at the Young Driver Test at Jerez over three days in December 2009, alongside IndyCar driver Mike Conway, who had the edge by three tenths of a second.

Team principal Ross Brawn commended Ericsson for his performance. Ericsson completed 136 laps in the BGP001 across the three days of running.

When he returned to the garage late on the final day, the car was packed away, marking its — and Brawn’s — final official appearance in Formula 1.

Ericsson would eventually reach the Formula 1 grid with Caterham in 2014, five years later. In 2022 he won the Indianapolis 500. The BGP001 would remain Brawn’s only F1 car.

Ayrton Senna tests Williams, McLaren and Brabham as a nobody (1983)

Before Ayrton Senna was Ayrton Senna – before the three F1 titles, the pole positions, the rain races, the mythology – he was a 23-year-old Brazilian shopping himself around the Formula 1 paddock after winning the British Formula 3 championship.

In 1983, Senna tested for Williams, McLaren, Brabham and Toleman.

During his test for Williams at Donington Park, he was quicker than other drivers including reigning world champion Keke Rosberg.

He also tested with Brabham at Paul Ricard, and with McLaren at Silverstone.

Ron Dennis made enquiries. Bernie Ecclestone offered terms. And then nothing happened — not at Williams, not at McLaren, not at Brabham.

The team that eventually gave Senna his race debut was Toleman, simply because it had a vacancy and was willing to fill it with an unknown.

A decade later, having won three world championships with McLaren and proven himself as one of the greatest drivers the championship had ever seen, Senna finally drove for Williams.

The 1983 tests, in retrospect, read like one of history’s great missed opportunities: a document of F1 teams failing entirely to recognise what was right in front of them.

Pastor Maldonado in a Minardi at 19 (2004)

The final entry on this list arrives with a gentle irony, given what we now know of Pastor Maldonado‘s Formula 1 career.

In November 2004, at the age of 19,Maldonado was given an opportunity to test with the Minardi F1 team at Misano in Italy. Specifically, he tested the Minardi PS04B-Cosworth. It made him the youngest Venezuelan ever to drive a Formula 1 car.

“In true Minardi tradition, we always try to seek out and encourage talented young drivers,” said Minardi team boss Paul Stoddart back then.

“Although Pastor has only been racing single-seaters for three seasons, his winning ways indicate he has a lot of natural ability.”

What makes the detail particularly arresting is the gap between that afternoon at Misano and his actual debut: Maldonado tested an F1 car more than six years before his grand prix debut.

Between the two lay four difficult seasons in GP2, a race ban for striking a marshal at Monaco, and the slow accumulation of Venezuelan state oil money through PDVSA that eventually made him an attractive enough proposition for a cash-strapped Williams team.

He won the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix and remains Williams’ last winner to this day.

Maldonado also accumulated one of the most remarkable records for incidents and accidents F1 has seen in the modern era.

But on a November afternoon at Misano in 2004, all of that was still ahead of him.