Two days ago, as you know, Michael Schumacher he turned fifty-four. For us, for all of us, one of the few cases where a person is worth living for its great past rather than for his indescribable present. The years come to mind when January was not yet a spring month and our first meeting of the season took place on the snow of Campiglio. Michael was an elusive presence. You arrived at a refuge and he was already leaving (and yes he ate!), Heading to the ski slopes. A sport to which he had practically approached arriving at Ferrari, first tackled with a little clumsiness and then dominated by dint of quadriceps and will. Michael on the snow was able to wear out even the very good companions of him. He devoted himself to skiing with the same all-encompassing passion which he applied to his real job, that of driving racing cars.
Also in these days at the beginning of the year, I happened to talk to an old guard Ferrari driver, one of those who had time to work with Michael. He reminded me of when in Maranello the card (which for some reason, I never understood, worked backwards: to enter and exit you had to slide it towards you and not forwards) was an academic institution. I told something of those years in a book called Màicol. When the head of the mechanics, who was “Attila” Petterlini at the time, read the weekly program to him and commented: so guys, Tomorrow it would be a strike, but Michael comes to shoot at Fiorano, you see what to do. Incidentally, they reported to me an episode with a reverse trend, namely a threatened strike precisely because of Schumacher. It happened in 2009, when it was clear that Michael would not be back on track to replace Massa injured in Hungary, and the team chose to let Badoer drive…
I am neither an extreme nostalgic nor a prophet of strike-breaking. Indeed, I am happy – as I hope everyone – that in today’s F1, with a frenzied travel calendar, the teams (which are companies after all) are obliged to protect working hours and enforce employee holidays. The mechanics and technicians of the red team are already busy enough, on the competition fields, competing with the turnstile clock to get out a nanosecond before the curfew starts: it makes no sense to ask them for more. But what happened in those yearsif I have to believe the many who have told me about it and are talking about it, it was not a sacrifice. Because with Michael Schumacher in the team, first of all you knew that every half hour spent in the pits helped him and the car to go faster; and, secondly, that at the end of the day he would thank you by coming to look for you in every corner of the box to shake your hand. Working with Michael was an all encompassing experience, not just in F1. Even when, in the not-so-congenial role of super-consultant, dealing with car customers, there was something to learn. He was able to arrive in Texan boots and a studded belt and just like getting into the car (an FXX), accelerating at the end of the Fiorano straight, going around the hairpin and the steering pad and in those few seconds using all the functions of the manettino that controlled traction and reported with absolute precision. Working is tiring regardless, but being in the garage with him, however tiring, was often not perceived as an effort.
More generally, Ferrari in the golden years had a different conception of time and its use. For a Jean Todt shut up in the office until eleven in the evening there was a Ross Brawn who on Friday after lunch said hello to everyone and went fishing. When Luca di Montezemolo, in the early 1910s, wanted to impose an iron fist with obligatory attendance even on Saturdays, a semi-revolution broke out. Today everything is different, the real workaholic seems to be Benedetto Vigna who has the damaged parts of the PU sent to him to understand the faults, as if he didn’t have enough to do as CEO. Enrico Gualtieri’s engineers have already divided the tasks, with half of the staff engaged on the present and the other half working on the 2026 challenge, which will be complicated to manage. I assume that, at least in this, there are no big differences with the other teams. There is the budget cap which requires you to manage resources wisely. Only the curiosity to know remains what would Michael think of all this. And the regret that he can’t tell us.
#years #Extraordinary #FormulaPassion.it