And, one might add, does it matter either way? When
Michael Schumacher called time on his
F1 career at Monza, he genuinely looked to me like a guy who - having thought about it very carefully - was happy to be getting out with his shirt.
Forget all the stuff about whether or not he would have liked to wait until after the final race at Interlagos before making the news public. In my view, that was inconsequential detail. At the end of the day, Michael wanted out and that's the most important underlying fact.
This remarkable competitor could round off that illustrious career by bagging an all-time record eighth world championship before he bows off the grand prix stage. But I really hope not. In my heart-of-hearts, I don't really think Michael deserves the 2006 title crown any more than
Ayrton Senna did at the end of 1990 after using his
McLaren as a battering ram to push Alain Prost's
Ferrari off the circuit at Suzuka on the opening lap of the Japanese Grand Prix.
Now I quite understand that you might be looking a little askance at this point in the narrative. What the hell has Michael done with even roughly equates with Senna's premeditated, suicidal lunge into his hated rival 16 years ago? Well, I suppose the answer - at least on the surface - is 'not much'. But it's that crucial word 'premeditated' which suddenly puts Michael's deliberate act of skidding to a stop in order to block the track in this year's Monaco qualifying which puts the two acts into the same bracket. They both set out to cheat and gain an unfair advantage over their key rivals.
There is another reason why Schumacher does not deserve the championship, namely the decision of the stewards at Monza to handicap
Fernando Alonso with a penalty for supposedly 'impeding'
Felipe Massa's Ferrari in qualifying. I firmly believe that the
FIA stewards, in this case, made a well-intentioned error of judgement, reaching the wrong conclusions from the evidence available to them. Nothing wrong in that, we all make mistakes.
