Atlas F1 Columnist
MICHAEL SCHUMACHER:
THE GREATEST OF ALL?
By Christopher Hilton.
Published by Haynes.
It has been debated endlessly in magazine articles, internet forums, pubs, and grandstands, and the general consensus has largely been that there is really no answer. There are too many different elements that make a driver great, few of which lend themselves easily to the type of quantification needed to come up with a final answer. Then there are the problems associated with trying to find a yardstick that will overcome the murky business of comparing drivers across different eras. And what exactly is meant by 'the greatest'?
Nevertheless, 'Michael Schumacher: The Greatest Of All?' sees Christopher Hilton revive the issue and set off to decide once and for all whether Michael Schumacher is the best driver ever to start a Grand Prix. Being aligned with the camp who maintain that there is no way of finding a definitive answer to the question, I had severe doubts about the basic premise of this book, and in the main I think my concerns were right on the money.
On the final page, Hilton reduces his shortlist of the best drivers of the championship era to just two – Schumacher and Fangio. He backs out of making a firm final call, which suggests that even he acknowledges that there is no answer to the question he has posed for himself. Evidently, then, the book is not about the final destination, but the journey: "a critical examination of his career" drawing upon "known facts and thoughtful extrapolations," according to the blurb inside the dust cover.
It's not a biography, which is probably a relief. To his credit, Hilton does mostly avoid the well-trodden path of Schumacher's rise in F1. In fact, key points such as his defection from Jordan to Benetton are left virtually unmentioned. There is a reasonably detailed account of the maneuverings that launched the German into F1 in the first place, but huge chunks are based on Adam Cooper's work that was published in Autosport a while ago.
The problem with utilising such a widely-read publication is fairly obvious – everyone will already have seen it. Indeed, Hilton makes regular use of easily accessible material (including, on one occasion, Atlas F1), so it was not uncommon to encounter something that seemed familiar.
This is a small problem, though, when compared to the way Hilton uses statistics. Any politician will tell you that numbers can be made to mean whatever the hell you want them to, and in this book the author takes this idea to new heights.
On page 25, for example, Hilton offers a table to illustrate Schumacher's genius. The table displays the number of victories that every Ferrari race winner has notched up since 1950, and the number of races that they contested for the Prancing Horse. According to the author:
"Let's examine that. In 1995 Ferrari fielded Berger and Alesi. Berger took one pole position and won no races, Alesi took no poles but won one in Canada. In 1996 Schumacher came and took four poles, three wins. His teammate Eddie Irvine had no poles and no wins. It was very simple: Schumacher could take a car which was nowhere good enough to win a World Championship and find ways to make it win races. The others couldn't."
I'm not sure that it is that simple. For one thing, it is completely invalid to compare the 1995 Ferrari team with the 1996 Ferrari team, considering the magnitude of the changes that the marque underwent between those seasons, and for another, what do the 1996 statistics illustrate other than that Schumacher is better than Irvine? One could just as easily (and erroneously) contend that Ascari was better because his 27 races yielded 13 poles and 13 wins – a ratio of roughly 1:2, as opposed to Schumacher's 1:3.
Such comparisons also assume that Ferrari as a team has remained an unchanged entity since its inception, with different drivers slotting in and out as required, when in fact the only thing that connects the Ferrari for which, say, Farina drove and the Ferrari of today is the name. It would be just as useful (or useless) to compare Schumacher's record at Ferrari with Clark's at Lotus.
Later, Hilton states that "the great ones announce themselves early," and lays out another series of tables showing how many races a selection of top-line drivers through history needed to score their first pole, win and title. Towards the end, the author includes a list of "modern drivers who won the Championship only once."
The drivers listed are Keke Rosberg, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, and... Mika Hakkinen. Given that the book was published this year, such carelessness cannot even be excused by claiming that the text was prepared before Mika won his second title. Not good enough.
Sadly, much of Hilton's arguments are built upon conveniences and hot air, interspersed with assorted harmless padding and the odd comment that was just plain bewildering (the one about Sunday morning warm up being arguably more important that qualifying because the cars are run in race trim still has me scratching my head – next time I'm speaking with an F1 driver I'll ask them which session they'd rather top).
One of Hilton's points, however, had my wholehearted agreement. On page 18, he writes of Schumacher's reaction to the death of the marshal at last year's Australian Grand Prix.
"People convinced that Schumacher was a cold and calculating man had somehow to reconcile this with the way he betrayed the most human emotions ... and invariably found the right words to cover the somber moments."
Due to what could be put down to an error of judgment on behalf of race organisers, it inadvertently fell to Schumacher to inform the media (and thus, the world) of the marshal's death that day. It's a job he should never have had to do, and the way he handled a truly awful situation left a lasting impression on all who were there to see it.
Despite all the things that I disliked about this book, there was the odd flash of magic.
Hilton did speak to a few people who either have some connection with Schumacher or sufficient standing within the sport to speak with authority on the subject of greatness. Some have genuinely intriguing stuff to say, and one that particularly stood out was a conversation between the author and Stirling Moss.
Hilton: "Schumacher's got a wife and two kids, more money than you can shake a stick at, but if you put him into a pressure point he doesn't back off. If it's you and he going towards La Source hairpin ...
Moss: ... I know I'm going to beat him out of it ...
Hilton: ... he's not going to back off.
Moss: That's when it's interesting, that's when you come to the situation where you say, 'I don't bloody well care whether you're Schumacher or not, sod you. No way will you come out first.'
Hilton: But he's looking across at you saying 'Stirling Moss, sod YOU.'
Moss: No, no, he'll know by the time we go into the corner that I'm going to come out first.
Hilton: How?
Moss: Because ... it's my business to make him know.
Hilton: What if it's his business to make you know?
Moss: I'll prove him wrong.
At the end of the day, I just didn't see eye to eye with the author on this book. I didn't agree with the premise, the timing (would it not be better to wait until Schumacher's career is over before trying to evaluate it?), or the way Hilton presented his arguments. Even little things about the way the book was organised niggled at me. Footnotes, for example, are wholly unnecessary in a book such as this.
Still, there are no doubt enough fans out there who will lap up anything that has Schumacher's name on it, so it doesn't really matter whether this book is good or bad. It will sell by the truckload.
If you're in the company of several Formula One fans and conversation happens to lull, one remarkably efficient way of firing things up is to raise the age-old 'who is the greatest ever?' question.
"The list throws into starkest relief what Schumacher had done at Ferrari. He won an astonishing 34 of his 92 races compared to, in alphabetical order, Michele Alboreto's three wins from 80 races, Jean Alesi's one win from 80 races, and Gerhard Berger's five wins from 96 races. You can argue that the Ferrari infrastructure was not of the quality in the 1980s and early to mid 1990s that it became under Todt and Brawn, and you can argue that the cars were not of the quality to win races.
Moss: "Graham Hill was exceptionally good: he did more with less talent that any person I can think of, but Graham was not a racer. Graham was an exceptionally good driver in the way that Prost was one of the great drivers, Jackie Stewart another. I don't think those guys were racers. They were fantastic drivers but you had to realise there is a difference. Racers are guys who go out there and bloody well race. 'Boy, I'm not going to let you win.' That is a mentality: your car might be incapable of winning but you never think in those terms. Schumacher is the same, Ayrton was the same."
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