F1 Racing: The Man Apart

Ralf Schumacher should get out of Formula 1. Not because he isn't good enough or quick enough or talented enough - he is all of those things - but because, deep down, his demeanour strongly suggests he doesn't actually want to be there. And a half-hearted approach to perhaps the toughest sport in the world does no one any good.

He'll tell you that his focus is not to be questioned and that he's having more fun than ever in F1. "If I wasn't hungry, I wouldn't be here," he says. "I love what I do and want to win, and as soon as I don't get that feeling any more I'll move over and give my cockpit to someone else." But, it looks increasingly likely, the only real reason he's still racing is that he can't think of anything else to do.

He admitted as much to a close colleague in his early days at Williams, around 2000. He confided that he planned to see out his existing Williams contract, maybe renew for one or two more years, then call it a day lest, like brother Michael, he found himself still messing about in F1 in his thirties.

Well, Ralf turned 31 on the Friday of Indianapolis this year, one-and-a-half years into his mind-boggling three-year Toyota deal (US$25 million per year). Toyota baked him a cake and the whole race team gathered around in the paddock to sing 'Happy Birthday' - stroking stars' egos is a universal reflex within the F1 community.

I sit down with him in the paddock immediately after this communal love-in for the second of my three interview sessions with him on consecutive days over the US GP weekend.

"Happy birthday," I offer cheerily.

"Thanks," he responds, an awkward smile failing to mask his wariness. "You're a journalist," you can see him thinking, "you're British and you work for F1 Racing, so I know damn' well that you don't mean a syllable of it, you two-faced pillock."

"Do you like birthdays?"

"Er, well... it depends where they are," he laughs. "I mean, at home you can enjoy them a little more, with family and friends. But for the past four or five years I've had my birthday at a race." He's almost sighing.

"So, do you look forward to life outside Formula 1?"

"No, I don't think so, because Formula 1 is my life... more or less, so it doesn't take away anything. At the end of the day, I've always been involved in motorsport and I don't know any different."

The right words are being spoken, for sure, but the delivery isn't wholly convincing. It sounds like a scripted performance - Ralf reeling off what he feels he ought to be saying. And, to an extent, he's right to do so, of course. No employer, F1 teams included, wants an employee to sound less than committed to the cause, and F1 drivers are skilled deployers of rhetoric conveying the 'right' public impression. But there's a degree of half-heartedness implied by such phrases as "I don't think so" and "more or less".

You sense that Ralf isn't sure that even he believes what he's saying - although he's produced similar bland sentiments so many times now that it comes pretty naturally. In other words, Formula 1 is his life - but he isn't sure he really wants it to be.

My Indy interviews are at open press sessions - ie, open to all journalists. Yet, even on his birthday, it turns into an exclusive because I'm the only one to turn up. (The day before, it was just me and a reporter from the local Indianapolis Star newspaper. He questioned Ralf's role in the previous year's Michelin tyre fiasco - it was Ralf's accident in practice that triggered the realisation that there was a serious problem - and went away happy with a couple of inconsequential, routinely delivered answers.)

Only on the Saturday, after Ralf qualifies unexpectedly well in P8, do more people turn up, pushing up the attendance figure to a dizzying three: ITV's James Allen, French freelancer Agnes Carlier, and me.

"You see, most of the press are quite superficial," jokes Allen while we wait for Ralf to arrive. "We only come to these things when someone does something good."

That's not entirely true, of course. Mark Webber, one of F1's nice guys, attracts more than 10 journalists to every open press session he holds, regardless of his most recent performance. By contrast, Ralf, despite his bigger name, is largely ignored.

Well, that's where a reputation for being grumpy and giving lazy answers gets you. Journalists, generally, mark him down as complacent, perhaps arrogant, although I've often found him surprisingly warm and witty. My own belief is that Ralf's insecurity persuades him to try hard, too hard, to project an agreeable F1 persona to mask deep-rooted doubts about his place in the F1 world; and others, subconsciously, find that unattractive.

He's aware, too, that most people never get to see the real Ralf. I ask him how he thinks he's perceived by the world in general. "I've never thought about it, really," he says. "At the end of the day I'm here to do my job, and I don't really worry about outside things."

Those who know Ralf well say that isn't true - that, really, he's quite sensitive to what people write and think about him.

"But it's difficult to get across your normal personality," he continues. "At a race, with so much going on, you will never be as you would be at home in a relaxed atmosphere. But I don't really worry about it."

"So how are you different when you're at home?"

"I don't know. I guess it's only visible to friends of mine."

"And what would they say about the real Ralf Schumacher?"

A long pause. "I don't know. I haven't asked them. I hope they'd say good things, but, obviously, in a friendship there are good times and bad times."

Such hesitation and uncertainty are rather sad. But Ralf's guardedness - whether he admits it or not - is also a product, inevitably, of the fact that he's Michael's little brother. That Ralf's F1 career has been played out in Michael's shadow is an obvious truth - but few comprehend just how far back that shadow stretches, or how deep it is.

Asked for the very first time, by German TV channel RTL, whether he was the next Michael Schumacher, a pre-teenage Ralf said words to the effect that, "There won't be a new Michael. Maybe there is a Ralf."

He's been trying to prove the truth of that answer ever since. But the "maybe" is still there. "How are you different from Michael now?" I ask, roughly 20 years later.

"The question is: am I different? The thing is, you tend not to compare yourself with your brother, and I've never done that."

Again, those who know Ralf say that that isn't true. His very being has been defined by Michael. So Ralf lingers on in F1 in the hope that success might firm-up his own identity.

Meanwhile, trying to extract anything of interest is blood-from-a-stone stuff. But his heart - in there somewhere - isn't made of stone. He just doesn't reveal it easily. Perhaps that's because, deep down, he doubts that there's anything there worth revealing. The Schumachers are, basically, quite simple folk, who attract far more complex analysis than they're comfortable with.

I put this to Ralf. "I guess so, yeah," he says. "We grew up in a totally normal environment. We've had an enormous amount of luck in our lives to choose the right sport and be successful. And we just enjoy that. So maybe we are simple people.

"But," he adds with half a smile, "a Formula 1 driver's life is never that simple."

However you slice it, though, F1 is not the love affair for Ralf that it is for Michael. You get the feeling that, unlike Ralf, Michael might even prefer to have his (unfortunately, mid-winter) birthday at a summer race meeting, with his team, than anywhere else. Ferrari are his family, his friends, his home. Toyota, however, are simply the suppliers of Ralf's fat pay cheque - and his birthday cake.

SIDEBAR

How close is Ralf's relationship with his famous brother? Prepare to be surprised...

The relationship between Michael and Ralf has been much examined. But Ralf's revelations to F1 Racing at Indy took even his close confidants by surprise.

Michael and Ralf Schumacher © LAT

"Honestly, I haven't really spent that much time with my brother because he's seven years older, so we grew up differently. By the time I realised I was about to grow up in karting, he was gone. He was living in his own house, and so on. Mine was like a separate childhood to his, so, you know, I don't know him that good, actually.

"He tried to help me, but that wasn't always wanted. I pretty much did things the way I wanted to. But he was so much older, his view about things is so different.

"In many ways I feel like I don't really know him now. That's why I'm not interested in whether he continues or not. It's his decision. It would be great if he stays, but if he doesn't I don't care."

The only time he and Michael appeared, publicly, to be close was when Ralf was a championship contender at Williams around 2002-03. Perhaps, to Michael, Ralf is simply another rival - one who isn't worth worrying about anymore.