Schumacher looking forward to RoC

The seven time world champion won the Nations Cup competition for Germany with Sebastian Vettel last year and also finished runner-up to Mattias Ekstrom in the main Race of Champions event.

This year his rivals include F1 drivers Jenson Button, David Coulthard and Vettel, and champions from tin-tops (Ekstrom, Yvan Muller and Andy Priaulx), (Sebastien Loeb), motorbikes (Troy Bayliss), NASCAR (Carl Edwards) and multilple Le Mans 24 Hours winner Tom Kristensen.

He says he enjoys spending time with, and racing against, the drivers from a range of categories that he wouldn't otherwise come into contact with.

"The nice thing about it is that you meet all the guys from the other motorsport areas and can spend some time with them," said Schumacher. "Usually, this is quite impossible as everybody is either busy or in the middle of a race weekend.

"The atmosphere is very relaxed, you can hang around with them, and this is just great. I have a massive respect for all of the guys competing. Everybody is a master of his own and everybody has a huge passion for our sport - that's what all this is about."

Schumacher says he also looks forward to competing on the specially-built course in the 90,000 seater Wembley stadium.

"It is first of all big fun," he added. "It is just weird driving in such a stadium as everything is extremely narrow, but at the same time you look at it and wonder how they managed to build a track with enough space for everything.

"It is spectacular to drive and to watch, and this is why it works so well since so many years."