Taken from Motor Sport, December 2020

Michael Schumacher is a complex subject. But perhaps quite a simple man. The F1 colossus who broke all the records that are only now being challenged by Lewis Hamilton was a perplexing fusion of supreme talent and insecurity, of great integrity and occasional on-track thuggery. Of humility and apparent arrogance.

Anyone who knew him well tells of a simple, good-hearted soul. It was visible sometimes when the guard came down for a few seconds; the smiling, fun-loving, normal man. “What do you think you would have been”, I asked him once, “if you’d not made it in racing?” “A mechanic, probably,” he replied immediately, “and very happy to be one.” A family man rather than a hellraiser, a blue-collar worker rather than an aspiring world leader (which is something that’s quite easy to imagine of a post-F1 Ayrton Senna, for example).