Ralf Schumacher's Reality Check

No doubt much will be made in Melbourne of the reappearance of the Piquet name on the Formula One grid, some 16 years after Nelson Sr had his final F1 outing for Benetton. But just as that name returns, so another is consigned to history. Australia will be the first Grand Prix entry list since Hungary 1991 not to feature a Schumacher.

Ralf Schumacher's F1 career outlived that of his older brother by just a single season, and it's pretty safe to say that he won't be back again. He's now turned his attention to DTM, and we await to see whether or not he accepts the lifeline that Mercedes appears to be offering him.

Back in October, Ralf seemed utterly convinced that he would be staying in F1 in 2008. Some weeks earlier he had announced that he would be parting company with Toyota - before the team had a chance to say so, thus saving face to some degree. It seemed that options elsewhere were limited to Force India, and yet he insisted that he had somewhere to go.

Indeed, he began to tell people that he had a definite offer, and that it was in effect up to him to accept it. I talked at length with Ralf at Interlagos last October, and it was probably one of the last interviews he gave as an active F1 driver.

"As soon as I have any news, I'll tell." he said. "There is a job, but I just have to say what I want to do, and then we'll see. There are a few factors which I can't tell you about now which I'll have to decide. Once I've done that I will announce what I'll do."

Would he really be willing to take a step back and drive a less competitive car, I asked?

"I've been driving one for three years! Simply from a team point of view it has to be something where the team is sure about what they want, that they have the financial background to achieve this, and somebody that wants to do it as a boss ...

"It needs to be a very short decision process without a big fuss, without any e-mails and faxes to different continents."

He knew Vijay Mallya thanks to Kingfisher's sponsorship of Toyota, and had lobbied the new team boss for a job. Naturally Mallya was flattered by the interest from race-winning drivers like Ralf and Giancarlo Fisichella, and of course he expressed an interest in hiring the German. Schumacher also began a less than subtle campaign to convince others in the team that he was the man.

At Fuji last year I was chatting to Mike Gascoyne after Adrian Sutil had scored a priceless point for the team. Ralf passed by, patted Mike on the back, and offered his congratulations.

I'm not sure how convinced Gascoyne was about Ralf's sincerity. They didn't always see eye-to-eye at Toyota, and indeed the story goes that Schumacher was not unhappy when Mike was eased out of the team in April 2006. What was that about being nice to people on the way up, because you'll see them again on the way down?

That Interlagos weekend there was a more formal meeting with the team management where Ralf was effectively told that he was just one of several drivers on the list, and he was welcome to join them at a test that was, in effect, a shootout.

He wasn't too keen on that idea, no doubt feeling that his resume was quite sufficient, but he reluctantly agreed.

He seems to have misjudged his position - and underrated Fisichella's - and perhaps he didn't really approach the thing in the right frame of mind. His day turned into a disaster with a couple of offs, and his relationship with the team was by all accounts, a little frosty.

Immediately afterwards he made it clear to the media that he didn't see any future for himself at Force India. As with his departure from Toyota, he in effect pre-empted any decision by the team.

Of course, since Interlagos a vacancy had arisen at McLaren, and there was all kinds of speculation as to who might fill it. As a multiple Grand Prix winner, and one who we now know does have some appeal for Mercedes, Ralf must have assumed he had a chance. The fact that he received an instant 'Thanks for your interest' must have been a blow to his ego.

The likelihood is that his test for Force India in December will stand as his last appearance in an F1 car, bringing to a career that he managed to stretch out for 11 well-compensated seasons with Jordan, Williams and latterly Toyota.

And what a strange career it was. There were days when he seemed to have proved that he deserved to be favourably compared with Michael - he did after all score six Grand Prix victories, usually with dominant performances from the front.

But among his 180 starts there were many more lacklustre outings, and very rarely any sign of the passion and commitment that made his brother such a great driver.

It all started at Jordan in 1997, alongside Fisichella - the man who 10 years later would take that last remaining seat at the renamed team. He arrived after success in F3 and Formula Nippon suggested that he was in a similar career path to Michael, and there were clear signs of promise over the two years he spent with the team.

It's worth remembering that in those early years he was accompanied everywhere by his ex-F3 engineer, who served as bag carrier, technical advisor, and general moral supporter. Ralf must have benefited hugely from that arrangement, because that man was Franz Tost, now team principal of Scuderia Toro Rosso.

In 1998 Ralf could have won the Belgian GP, but entirely logical team orders from Eddie Jordan ensured that he waited behind Damon Hill. He wasn't too happy about that, although he seemed to forget that the Brit had comfortably outpaced him in qualifying, and that was why he was ahead.

By then Ralf had already had a major falling out with the team over his contractual arrangements. He'd started the season with three offs in a row, and in an attempt to motivate him to stay on the road the team had renegotiated with manager Willi Weber for a deal that involve less money up front and a hefty points bonus.

Unimpressed, Ralf looked elsewhere, and to the surprise of many found a home at Williams for 1999. The timing was good, as BMW was due to join in 2000, and it made obvious sense to have a German driver. In addition, his new teammate Alex Zanardi floundered around, and made Ralf - who proved a very effective points gatherer - look even better than he was.

He was to stay with Williams for another five seasons, and along the way managed to negotiate a massive pay increase, helped in no small part by BMW's Gerhard Berger championing his cause and boosting his value.

He proved that he could take poles and win races when the package was just right, and ultimately there was little to choose between him and Juan Pablo Montoya. But even when the team had a great car, neither man could string a proper title challenge together.

In the summer of 2004 it was announced that he was to switch to Toyota for what was clearly going to be a huge amount of money over three years.

Again, his nationality didn't hurt as the team was based in Cologne - just a few kilometres from his home town of Kerpen - and it seemed like a logical choice, at least to Toyota. The joke at the time, of course, was that the bosses in Tokyo had got the wrong Schumacher ...

Over the three years he was often closely matched with his teammate, in this case Jarno Trulli, but on balance Trulli had the upper hand, despite his own sometimes erratic form. Last season the team's fortunes took a dip, and very often Schumacher was making up the numbers.

"It's been a very disappointing year for everybody, because everybody worked hard," he said.

"It's just that the outcome wasn't good enough. We did not develop at the right speed, obviously. Our car was sometimes competitive, but most of the time it wasn't.

"And obviously in a situation like that everybody is giving 100 percent, you try to push, and sometimes mistakes happen as well. So all in all I think everybody tried hard, but just it didn't work out.

"It is hard for both sides, because both sides want to be up front. But a driver can only express what he needs and what he wants, and he relies on the team to deliver. And in some ways we just couldn't get together."

He denied that he had been demotivated by the problems.

"It was not hard at all to motivate myself, and sometimes I myself don't understand why! But racing is something you like to do, and when you have a bad weekend you go to the next one and you hope it's all going to change and it's all going to be better.

"It might sound stupid to the outside, but in F1, anything is possible. For example, we had a difficult weekend in Fuji, but in China we were strong, from one to the other weekend."

With his final race for Toyota just a day away, the obvious question was whether he had any regrets about joining in the first place.

"It was a gamble, and I knew when I came here. I was really 100 percent sure it was going to work. But at the same time I knew that if it didn't work, that I'd have difficulties ever after. Which came true! But that's the way it is.

"In life you take decisions, and in hindsight it's always easy to speak about them. I have to say from a human point of view I would do the same thing again, because I really, really enjoyed working here, that's clear. Just from a pure success point of view, I think the answer is obvious.

"The alternative would have been to stay at Williams, which I didn't think would have been the right thing to do. There was one other alternative. I honestly thought about the long term, and I thought that it was almost impossible to not make it here. But I learned better!"

So that's Ralf the driver - what about Ralf the man? He remains something of an enigmatic character, and a man who has so little in common with his brother. At Benetton and Ferrari Michael was a team builder. The management became close friends, the guys in the team worshipped him.

Ralf couldn't be more different, and far from engendering affection from his team, very often did the opposite, and generally pissed people off, at all levels. Certainly earlier in his career he would regularly give his mechanics a little bonus payment after scoring points, but it's doubtful whether many recall him fondly.

A psychologist could tell us more about how the two brothers turned out so differently, but perhaps one could venture that coming along in the slipstream of Michael, Ralf generally had it easy. Everything fell in to place without much effort on his part, and in effect he was a little spoiled.

Ultimately his general contrariness may have cost him, and as I said, it pays to be nice to people on the way up. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the paddock with a bad word to say about such men as Trulli, Fisichella and David Coulthard. Ralf is perhaps, ultimately, better than all three. And he's the one who doesn't have a job in 2008.

He certainly had frosty relations with the media. Personally I've always got on OK with him, perhaps helped by the fact that I knew him a little before he got to F1. But whereas many other drivers have become good friends over such a period, I can't say the same about Ralf.

His English is undoubtedly more polished than Michael's, and when in the mood he can give far more insightful and thoughtful answers than the multiple world champion.

At the height of the Williams era there was a lot of interest in him, especially from the German media, and he clearly enjoyed the attention in the crowded press conferences held in the team motorhome.

But in general he didn't relish his media duties, and kept them to a minimum - helped by the fact that these days contracts very often specify how much media work a driver does at a Grand Prix weekend, be it 15 minutes a day or whatever.

With Germanic efficiency Ralf would honour his commitments to the letter, and he made sure you knew that you were privileged to have a chunk of his precious time.

As the clock ticked on our session in Brazil his earlier bravado about his 2008 prospects slipped away, and to my surprise he was willing to contemplate that his career might be drawing to a close after 10 years. Could he recall a highlight of that long career?

"I don't know," he mused. "If anything I think it was the races when I was together with Michael on the podium, they were quite good.

"It's been very quick. It was very interesting, it was a very difficult 10 years, because I've never really achieved what people expected me to achieve and what I expected to achieve.

"At the same time, I always have to explain why. The frustrating thing was I've never been in a position to prove myself. When the car at Williams was strong, we scored points and I won races. When the car at Toyota was decent, I did my best in it, but never consistently, obviously, with the package I had.

"When I joined F1 I really thought that I was going to be more successful. To be fair, 10 years in F1 is a long time. Not many people did that, and not many people were in the situation that I was in, I've always worked for good teams."

Unprompted, and with a sly grin, he then added: "I think I was very successful at least on another side. In hindsight, everything for my life after F1 worked out, but not in F1."

No-one can deny that he has tucked away a serious amount of money that bears little relation to his achievements on track. Probably only Berger can boast a similar career earnings/performance ratio.

"Yeah. I mean after all, once this thing is finished you can't pay the invoices with 'I've been an F1 driver.' You need to be able to finance your life, and at least there I was relatively successful..."

So now he's gone. Will he be missed? Of course not, but then drivers never are. Earlier in our conversation he had reflected on how little the sport had missed his brother, exactly a year after Michael's retirement.

"That's F1, that's the world anyway. You're not going to miss anybody, I guess.

"I really got a lot of shit for saying that in advance. I always got asked, and I said, 'No it's not going to have a big influence at all, because it's history.' When he announced he was retiring I said from that day, 'Michael is history in F1.' And that's true.

"I got a lot of blame for that in Germany, and now they all come and say, 'You were right.' I was the only one to say it. But that's the way it is, it's not disrespectful, it's simply the way life is. That counts for everybody...'

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