SchuDoKu: the Schumacher Stats

Seven world championships, 90 wins, 68 pole positions, 75 fastest laps. Those are the (current) headline numbers for Michael Schumacher, statistically the greatest driver Formula One has ever seen.

Arriving with a comparatively modest CV (1990 German F3 and Macau winner, and two-time World Sportscar race winner), his debut at the 1991 Belgian Grand Prix was when the F1 world truly sat up and took notice.

Seventh on the grid tied the best that the Jordan team had ever managed until that point, and this on a Spa circuit that Michael had never driven on before. Benetton had poached by the next race, and thus began his career with the team for whom he would take his first two world titles.

Starting behind a teammate was not something Michael had to deal with much in the early days. After Adelaide 1991, when he was out-qualified by then teammate Nelson Piquet, it would not be until the 1995 Belgian GP that he would see a Benetton in front of him on the grid - and even then the run of 57 races only ended when his car was damaged in practice and rain fell before he could do a qualifying lap.

He started 16th on the grid in that race and went on to take one of his most famous wins at Spa. At the time only two races (Detroit '82 and Long Beach '83, both by John Watson) had been won from further down.

In the midst of that long qualifying streak, he had taken his first victory at the same track back in 1992. At age 23 years 239 days, he was then the third youngest winner ever behind Bruce McLaren (USA 1959) and Jacky Ickx (France 1968). It was the only win all season that did not fall the way of either Williams or McLaren - a situation repeated when he won at Estoril in 1993.

It was in 1994 that Michael began his reign as F1's star driver. His first crown was clinched in controversial circumstances, but that overshadowed a season that netted eight victories and saw him take the first of his 68 pole positions at Monaco. Schumacher utterly dominated that race, leading every lap from pole and taking the fastest lap to achieve the rarely seen 'clean sweep'.

This would prove to be one of the few statistical categories that would elude Michael during his career, it was a feat he managed on only four other occasions (Canada 1994, Spain 2002, Australia and Hungary 2004). Jim Clark still leads the clean sweep table, doing so eight times.

It is worth pointing out, however, that Michael has raced in an era of fuel stops, making it very difficult to lead every lap of a race. This theory is borne out by Schumacher never leading more than 144 consecutive laps at any time, 120 short of Senna's record from 1988. He has also taken the 'grand slam' of pole/win/fastest lap a record 22 times, easily beating Clark's 11.

Michael Schumacher tests the Ferrari 412 at Estoril, Portugal in 1995 © LAT

After clinching back-to-back crowns and 19 race victories for Benetton, he headed to a Ferrari team that had won just twice in their 83 previous races, but three Schumacher wins in 1996 indicated that he was pulling them in the right direction. He also took four poles, as many as they had managed in the previous five seasons combined. Three years later, in 1999, Schumacher, with teammate Eddie Irvine, helped Ferrari take the constructors' version - their first triumph in that category since 1983.

Although his record in the 1990s is nothing to be sniffed at, it was in the 2000s that Michael would truly assault the history books. By the end of 1999, Schumacher had competed in 127 Grand Prix, winning 35 of them, a 27.6 percent success rate. Since the beginning of 2000 he has won 55 of his 119 starts - 46.2 percent of the races in this decade, a strike rate of 1 in every 2.16 races, comparable with Juan-Manuel Fangio's record of 1 win per 2.125 starts. Fangio, though, only started 51 races, winning 24 of them.

Schumacher really does look impressive is in the points per start category. His 5.527 points per Grand Prix is the best in history by any driver with a minimum of 10 starts, beating Fangio's 5.444 - and that despite competing in nearly five times as many races as the Argentine.

The 2000 season was to prove one of contrasting extremes, with first corner retirements at back-to-back events in Austria and Germany and an engine failure at the French GP (the last time that happened to him, 110 races before). Despite this, nine wins were enough to bring the drivers' championship back to Maranello at long last. The last four races of the season were won from pole position, a feat he also managed in the opening two events of 2001, setting an all-time record for consecutive wins from pole.

Later that year, he sealed a fourth world crown with victory at Hungary, and at the next race surpassed Alain Prost's mark of 51 race victories by winning the Belgian GP - ironically the same race that Prost won in 1987 to equal the previous record of 27 wins, held by Jackie Stewart. For the third time in his career, Schumacher took nine wins in a season, tying the single season record that he achieved in 1995 and 2000, and that Nigel Mansell had managed in 1992.

Mansell had done it in a 16-race season compared to 17 in all of Schumacher's seasons, thus making his record more impressive. Not to be outdone, Schumacher smashed the record with 11 wins out of 17 in 2002, becoming the first man to finish on the podium in every single race - and the first man since Fangio back in 1955 to score in every F1 championship race in one season. By winning the British Grand Prix, he scored his 107th career podium, beating another record previously held by Prost.

In 2003 he would overhaul Fangio's record of five titles, which had stood since 1957, while simultaneously becoming the first man since the great Argentine to take four straight world titles. This one would be a lot more laboured than any of the others, with Michael having to cope with the shock of spinning out of the Brazilian GP - his first failure to finish since Hockenheim two years earlier, and the first time neither Ferrari was on the podium since the 1999 European Grand Prix. Six wins and 303 laps in the lead remain his lowest ever totals in a title year.

Although most assumed we would never a season like 2002 again, he surpassed it in 2004, winning 13 races, including the first five (again tying a record from Mansell's 1992 season), and then another run of seven in a row, the longest ever streak in one season - all of which were in the same car, the Ferrari F2004, chassis #239.

Michael Schumacher with the 2003 FIA World Drivers Championship trophy © LAT

He sealed what could turn out to be his last title at Spa, the place where he made his debut and took his first F1 win. Ten fastest laps broke the single season record, he became the first man in history to start 100 races from the front row, and his 682 laps led are more than all but 21 drivers have managed in a career.

Heading into the 2005 season as the favorite, Schumacher had a terrible year, only avoiding a winless campaign by taking victory in the farcical six-car race at Indianapolis. He had also developed an alarming habit of qualifying extremely poorly - when he clinched his seventh title at Spa '04, he had only started outside the top ten twice in 209 appearances.

He would then do so four times in the following six races, and added three more later in the season, including starting from pitlane at Shanghai when he crashed with Christijan Albers on the way to the grid.

A bright spot amid all that was taking pole position at the Hungaroring, which put him level with Ayrton Senna on 65 pole positions. He finally broke that record, the last major achievement not belonging to him, by taking pole for the 2006 San Marino Grand Prix.

Of course, this season is not yet over, and Schumacher has continued to pad his existing numbers. Victory at Magny-Cours made him the first man to win at the same circuit eight times, and at the German Grand Prix he led his 5,000th career lap - to put that in perspective no other driver has even led 3,000 laps in F1.

Magny Cours also saw him take a record 40th win from pole position, while Monza gave the German his 90th overall win, making him the first man to have won races held more than 14 years apart (his first win having come in August 1992).

Regardless of what happens in Shanghai, Suzuka and Interlagos, Michael Schumacher has totally redefined the F1 record books, relegating megastars such as Fangio, Senna and Prost to mere support roles. For that, he can be truly proud.