MPH: Mark Hughes on...

Nick Heidfeld has just accepted what would have been the dream job for Michael Schumacher. Pounding around doing miles upon miles of tyre testing for Pirelli is exactly what Schumacher ideally needs if he is ever to recapture his winning form.

Even if it meant canning some late-season races and allowing Heidfeld to stand in for him at Mercedes, Schumacher would have been perfectly served to lead the Pirelli development programme. It would have effectively recreated the situation he had in his Ferrari/Bridgestone years whereby everyone else on those tyres had to live with whatever Michael decided suited him best. He could have aggressively pushed for an ever-stronger front tyre, one that responded exactly as he liked when he loaded it up early in the corner, with just the right construction to react to his preference of delicately pivoting the car around the outer front tyre as the corner progresses.