Jean Todt and Michael Schumacher are arguably the most successful team principal-driver pairing in F1 history. The two shared a brilliant bond and built Ferrari back up to become the dominant team in the early 2000s. Schumacher was famous for his aggressiveness and clinical nature on track. However, Todt believes that there is another strength that Schumacher had that was perhaps his biggest.
“Not everyone would have succeeded. Five long years before winning the World Champion Title with Scuderia Ferrari”, said Todt as he looked back at how Schumacher helped the team return to dominance in the 2000s. Explaining Schumacher’s greatest strength, the Former Ferrari Boss added,
“With three world championships played in the last race, Michael’s greatest strength is setting a target until it is met”.
Todt: “Not everyone would have succeeded. 5 long years before winning the World Champion Title with Scuderia Ferrari. With 3 world championships played in the last race. Michael’s greatest strength is setting a target until it is met”.#KeepFightingMichael pic.twitter.com/cMt33kWJgL
— Michael Schumacher (@_MSchumacher) July 22, 2024
1994, 1997, and 2003 were all the years when the championship was decided in the last race. In two of these years, Schumacher won the title (1994 and 2003) in the last race.
The German left Benetton after the 1995 season and moved to Ferrari in 1996. However, once he moved to Maranello, he had to wait for five years before he won his maiden championship with the Prancing Horse in 2000. Now, it remains to be seen if Lewis Hamilton can help Ferrari return back to their glory days or not.
Will Hamilton lead Ferrari back to winning ways?
Ferrari last won a championship in 1983 before Schumacher led them back to glory in 1999 with the Constructors’ title. 2008 was the year when Ferrari last won the Constructors’ championship.
Hamilton decided to join the Maranello outfit in 2025, with the hopes of ending the team’s drought and doing what Schumacher did back in the day. Schumacher was the one who led the team in the right direction and was brutally honest when it came to the Italian team’s performance.
He always demanded more from the team and anything less than perfection was not acceptable to him. That’s the reason why he’s a seven-time champion.
Hamilton too demanded more from Mercedes every race. At the same time, he’s always grateful to the team for pushing. After over two years of struggle, Mercedes seems to be back near the front. However, Ferrari seems to lack a personality like Hamilton or Schumacher at the moment.
Although Frederic Vasseur is a performance-oriented team principal, he’s not a driver who can give valuable feedback to the engineers to guide the side in the right direction. Hamilton will most likely give that much-needed feedback when he joins Ferrari next year.
