SUMMARY
- MIchael Schumacher does not think he was the best driver.
- Schuamcher did think that he was the most successful driver, but not the best.
Michael Schumacher is clearly one of the most accomplished drivers in F1 history. He has won 7 Championships, 91 race wins, and hundreds of podiums. Despite these accomplishments, Schumacher did not think he was the best driver in the world.
Before Schumacher proved to be the driver we witnessed him to be, fans never thought any driver would be able to win 7 Championships in a single career. Before Michael won his 7 Championships, the most titles for any 1 driver was 5 Championships. This was accomplished by Juan Manuel Fangio in the 1950s.
Michael Schumacher did not think he was the best driver in the world
Back in 2001, just after the F1 season had completed, Michael Schumacher gave an exclusive interview where he said he does not consider himself to be the best driver in the last decade.
“There is a general consensus that you are the best driver of the last decade,” The interviewer began their question, when Schumacher interrupted them, saying: “No, I don’t agree about that.”
“What I would agree with, is that I am the most consistent over the past ten years.”
“Look, me saying that I’m the best sounds very arrogant; I would never say that, and I don’t even know if it’s true. I’m the most successful driver – to that, I agree with. But I don’t really know if I’m the best or the fastest. I don’t even know how you can measure that.”
In honour of Michael Schumacher’s birthday, here’s his legendary drive at the 1998 Hungarian GP.
Ross Brawn: “We need 19 qualifying laps from you.”
Schumacher: “Ok. Thank you.”Schumacher had to build a gap big enough to come out ahead of McLaren & he did just that. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/VJ0Hn4TYTT
— Daniel Valente 🏎️ (@F1GuyDan) January 3, 2024
When this interview was released, Michael had just won his 4th Championship of his career. During the 2001 season, he completely dominated the grid after winning 11 out of the 17 races that were held that year. There was no doubt that he was the most successful driver of that decade. However, he did not consider himself to be the best driver of the past decade.
After this interview, Michael won 3 more championships giving him a total of 7. This made him not just the most successful driver of the decade, but of all time. However, today, Lewis Hamilton has come close to breaking this record. He has equaled Schumacher’s record and is looking to win his 8th Championship. This has brought up the debate of who is the better driver. However, both these drivers cannot be compared. They both raced in different eras in F1 and the sport is unbelievably different today when compared to the 90s and 2000s.
This F1 driver could’ve stopped Michael Schumacher’s first title
During the late 80s and early 90s, Ayrton Senna was considered to be one of the best drivers in F1. However, in 1994, he had a fatal accident while leading the San Marino Grand Prix. Michael had a tremendous amount of respect towards Senna for his accomplishments. So it could have been possible that Schumacher did not consider himself the best driver because, in his mind, that was Senna.
During his interview, he claimed that Senna could have won the title in 1994.
“I think my first World Championship in ’94, I would have had for sure much more difficulties to win it against Senna than to win it against Hill, because Senna was much faster than Hill.”
During the 1994 season, Michael Schumacher won the title over Hill with just 1 point between them. Although Senna was not able to score a point in the first few races of the season, there was no doubt that he was a better driver than Hill. Just as the car was getting better, Senna had his fatal accident in Imola. Since then Schumacher’s battle for the Championship was with Damon Hill who drove the other Williams.
Michael also admired Senna a lot. During his interview, Schumacher referred to Senna as his idol. When the German driver matched Senna for total race wins, he was filled with emotions and broke down during the press conference after the race. He was consoled by his brother, Ralf Schumacher, and his rival, Mika Hakkinen.
