"Now," he added, "I'd just like to concentrate on the last races and finish it in style and, hopefully, with the championship. We've done a big step today for that. We're now two points behind with three races to go. If you go back to Canada at mid-season, nobody thought we could be in the position that we are, one hundred percent focused for the constructor's and the driver's championships."
Undoubtedly, Schumacher will go down as one of the greatest F1 drivers - ultra-fast, absolutely precise, a ruthlessly aggressive racer when required, and too, a blocker of the first order! Where Schumacher may have been the greatest of all-time, ahead of even Senna, was in getting the right team assembled around him and galvanising them to action with an unremitting work ethic. Ten years ago, Schumacher brought Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne with him from Benetton to Ferrari and quickly made the legendary Italian marque his team. He was always ready to test and was deeply interested in the technical aspects of the development programme and, of course, produced big-time on the track, both in testing and on race weekends. The arrival of former Peugeot racing boss Jean Todt as
Ferrari's team manager was the final key component, as the Frenchman helped turn the Maranello operation into
F1's standard-setter.
Schumacher's record speaks for itself. He made his F1 debut in the middle of 1991 with Eddie Jordan's team, then moved immediately to Benetton, where he spent four-and-a-half years, winning his first two championships with the team in 1994 and '95, powered by Ford engines in '94 and Renaults in '95. Schumacher joined Ferrari in 1996 and finished second in points in '97 and '98, although he was excluded by the
FIA from the rankings in '97 after running Jacques Villeneuve off the track at the season-closing race in Spain.
