'Not even the best F1 driver in his family' - Pain of being the other Schumacher

When, on March 9, 1997, in Melbourne, Ralf Schumacher made his Formula 1 grand prix debut, he was 21. Yesterday, 30 June, he turned 50. I therefore hope that you will join me in wishing him a very happy birthday, albeit a day late and therefore a Deutschmark short.

By comparison with that of his elder brother, Ralf’s F1 career was an unremarkable one. But then, alongside Michael Schumacher‘s F1 magnum opus, the record of every F1 driver, with the sole exception of Lewis Hamilton, has been pretty pedestrian, statistically at least. Nonetheless, Michael’s little bro was a fast driver, and for a while he was quite successful. In 11 F1 seasons, he started 180 grands prix, standing on 27 podiums, six times from the central position, and he scored six pole positions and drove eight fastest laps. Not too shabby.

In 1997, his F1 rookie year, he was outscored by his Jordan team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella by 20 points to 13, but Fisichella had had half an F1 season’s more experience than had his younger team-mate. It was not surprising that Giancarlo made fewer mistakes therefore, but Ralf was sometimes as quick or quicker in qualifying, Fisichella edging their season’s quali count by 10 sessions to seven.

The following year, 1998, Fisico left Jordan for Benetton, and then Ralf’s Jordan team-mate was a world champion: Damon Hill. Again, Hill outpointed Schumacher, by 20 to 14, but Ralf beat Damon in qualifying by 10 sessions to six. Roughly halfway through that season I remember Frank Williams telling me that he thought Ralf “might be the real deal”, so it was no surprise to me when he signed him to Williams for 1999, partnering him with Alex Zanardi, who had raced in F1 for Jordan, Minardi, and Lotus in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994 – without stirring many fans’, pundits’, or F1 insiders’ souls, truth be told – but had then raced quite brilliantly in CART for Chip Ganassi in 1996, 1997, and 1998, winning 15 races and two drivers’ championships, often in flamboyant style.

Ralf scored all his F1 victories with Williams

Many of us therefore thought that the civil war at Williams between Schumacher and Zanardi in 1999 would be a close one, possibly even an uncivil one. Well, it was not. Perhaps that season was Ralf’s finest in F1 – I would subscribe to that opinion and you will doubtless have your own point of view – but what is incontestable is that he comprehensively outperformed poor Alex. Ralf was the faster qualifier in 11 of the season’s 16 grands prix, and in the races he was usually in a different class. He scored 35 points, including podium finishes at Albert Park and Silverstone, ending up sixth in the F1 drivers’ world championship, whereas Zanardi’s best placing all year was seventh at home at Monza. How many points did he score? None.

If Ralf had been a cocky lad in his early F1 years, the consummate manner in which he vanquished Alex in 1999 made him cocksure, which is a slightly different trait, and a less attractive one. In other words, whereas previously he had been assertive in a cheeky way, now he was arrogant about his confidence. In 2000 he had a new team-mate at Williams, a 20-year-old rookie named Jenson Button, whom he outpointed 24-12 in the F1 drivers’ world championship. But Button’s pace sometimes caught Schumacher off guard, particularly on fast, challenging, and/or technical circuits that rewarded the young Englishman’s naturally smooth and therefore deceptively rapid driving style, such as Interlagos, Silverstone, Spa, and Suzuka, at all of which Jenson was the faster Williams qualifier.

In 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 Williams’ drivers were Schumi Jr and Juan Pablo Montoya. If there was a gulf between them in terms of popularity with media and fans – which there was, and it was tilted very much in Montoya’s favour owing to his infectious smile and ebullient character – within the team the differences were not so clear-cut. To put it bluntly, they were both obstreperous in the extreme. Yet they were also both very fast, and their mutual antipathy fomented a rivalry that caused them both to dig deep and thereby find raw pace that sometimes resulted in brilliant qualifying performances. Montoya edged their quali contest across their four seasons together, by 34 to 23, but Juan Pablo rightly enjoys the reputation of being one of F1’s fastest one-lap specialists of the first few seasons of the 21st century, and 34-23 is by no means an annihilation. Moreover, in 2001 Ralf outpointed Juan Pablo by 49 to 31, and in 2002 it was 50-42 in Juan Pablo’s favour. Again, that is no rout.

In early 1997, during an argument with 21-year-old Schumacher when they were both at Jordan, 24-year-old Fisichella had coined one of the all-time-great F1 put-downs – “At least I’m the best driver in my family” – and now, in 2003, the gulf between the Schumacher brothers’ form was becoming chasmic. That year Michael won his sixth F1 drivers’ world championship, leaping ever higher and more jubilantly on every successive podium, whereas Ralf often looked very grumpy as he moped his way around the paddock. I remember arranging a one-to-one interview with him in the summer of that year and, so unpublishably brief and bland were his answers to my questions about his chances of winning the F1 drivers’ world championship, that I excused myself and aborted our conversation after just 11 of our allotted 30 minutes.

If a driver is not enjoying himself off track, he rarely performs well on track, and so it was that Montoya began to dominate his unhappy team-mate. In 2003, Juan Pablo’s finest season in F1 in my opinion, he won the intra-Williams battle easily, by 82 points to 58; and in 2004 the gulf was wider still, for he scored 58 points to Ralf’s 24, although Ralf missed six grands prix as a result of injuries sustained in a big shunt at Indianapolis.

He raced three more seasons in F1, all of them for Toyota, earning $24 million (about £13 million in those days) in each of those years, which is a lot to pay for a trio of third places (two in 2005 and one in 2006). His team-mate throughout that time was Jarno Trulli, who scored two second places and one third place during those three seasons, but qualified much better, earned significantly less in so doing, and, in the third and last of those seasons, 2007, began to outperform his palpably morose and increasingly feeble team-mate in no uncertain terms.

I was a magazine editor in those days, and at Indianapolis in 2007 my colleagues and I set up a makeshift studio, complete with a phalanx of powerful arc lights, in a surplus-to-requirements Bridgestone hospitality room, and there we photoshot almost all the drivers, one after another. When it was Ralf’s turn, he stood where our photographer told him to stand, but when he was asked to smile he did not. Instead he stepped away from the mark and walked right up to me. “OK, listen,” he said, his face twisted into what I can describe only as a grotesque rictus of disgruntlement. “Your magazine has been critical of me and the Toyota team this year, but I’ll still do this photoshoot for you. But it goes both ways. If I do this photoshoot for you, you have to stop being so critical, OK?”

“I’m sorry, Ralf,” I replied, “but I can’t agree to that. I can’t and won’t guarantee you positive coverage in our magazine simply because you agree to stand still for one of our photographers for a few minutes.”

Clearly, my reply was not what he had been expecting. “No, but it goes both ways,” he spluttered. “If I do this photoshoot, then you have to…”

And then, suddenly, I felt angry – very angry – and I did something that I have never done with an F1 driver before or since. I lost it. I told him to go away, and I phrased that directive in the most profane way that one can. I regret that, by the way. It was unnecessarily rude of me. Anyway, off he went, photoshoot aborted.