Interview: Moss Still Unconvinced by Schumacher

Ferrari's Michael Schumacher is the most successful driver Formula One has ever seen. But is he a real racer?

It sounds ridiculous for the question to be raised, particularly after the German won in Canada last weekend to take the Championship lead from Kimi Raikkonen for the first time this season.

That performance was praised by Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn as "one of the best races I have ever seen."

Yet Stirling Moss, the late Juan Manuel Fangio's greatest rival in the 1950s, is still not fully convinced by a record-breaker who threatens to better the Argentine's five titles this year.

But the 73-year-old Briton has no doubts at all about Finland's Raikkonen and Spaniard Fernando Alonso. Both are drivers close to his heart.

"What I like about Kimi is that he's a racer," he told Reuters. "And I reckon I was a racer. Not a racing driver. There's a hell of a difference. In my whole life of racing, and I did 500 and something races, I reckon there were only two or three people that I could call racers. It's a very rare commodity.

"Whether Michael is or not is difficult to say. Was Fangio a racer or not? I can't say that either," said Moss, who still rates his old friend and nemesis as the greatest driver yet.

Brazilian Ayrton Senna runs Fangio close, "but he wasn't quite the gentleman that Fangio was", while Moss said Schumacher "has got to be up there but he makes too many mistakes."

About Attitude

Being a racer is not just about winning. It is to do with attitude, fighting spirit and the thrill of going wheel to wheel with an opponent. It is something that can be hard to see when, like Schumacher and Fangio, you are dominant.

"Jean Behra was a racer," said Moss of his French rival, killed at the AVUS circuit near Berlin in 1959 without ever winning a race. "If you passed Jean Behra, you could never be sure he wouldn't try and come back past you.

"With most of the drivers, once you get past them, you say thank you and off you go and you're not really thinking 'God, they're going to come back and bite my arse.' There are very few (racers) really. 'Black' Jack Brabham was like that to an extent. I can't think of many more, which is a shame really."

Ralf Schumacher, who followed his brother around for lap after lap in Montreal on Sunday, would not fit the bill even if the realities of modern racing makes it hard for drivers to overtake.

That performance prompted Williams technical director Patrick Head to comment that maybe Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya might have got bored "if he was sitting on the tail of another car for more than 40 laps."

Alonso meanwhile set the fastest race lap while Raikkonen fought from the back of the grid to sixth place. Moss said both were surefire champions of the future.

"Oh I'm sure. Absolutely. It may not be this year or next, but certainly, " he said. "It will be interesting to see which one gets there first really. And which car."

Highest Accolade

Moss is generally regarded as the greatest driver never to win the Formula One Championship but his stature was undimmed by that failure.

"I suddenly thought that what matters to me is what the other drivers think," he said after recalling his frustration at losing out to Ferrari-driving compatriot Mike Hawthorn by one point in 1958. "If the other drivers felt I was the person they wanted to beat, that was the highest accolade I could ask for.

"The thing that I find difficult to accept nowadays is that there is no humility. Most of the drivers nowadays are a bit like Eddie Irvine, who if he was half as fast as he thought he was would be moderate. It seems that the modern thing is to feel that you are without doubt the best.

"It never used to be like that."