Not sure how many people saw the crash last week involving Felipe Massa, the F1 driver for Ferrari but it was not pretty. A piece of debris hit him in the head while driving on the track. Thankfully there have been great strides made to safety involving the cars and innovations in regards to the helmets. After being hit he lost control and the car ran into a tire barrier that was 5 or 6 tires deep, crumpling the car. It appears that Massa will be ok but does have an eye injury that may prevent him from driving again.In the short term it looks like former world champion and Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher will temporarily end his retirement and fill in in that seat.
"The Formula One chapter has been completely closed for me for a long time," Schumacher said in a statement Wednesday. "But for reasons of loyalty to the team, I cannot ignore this unfortunate situation. As the competitor, I am very much looking forward to facing this."
The only reason that I ever watched F1 was to see Schumacher dominate the F1 ranks and cruise to championships (Schumacher is a seven-time F1 champion, winning five consecutive titles for Ferrari from 2000 through 2004 - 91 victories and 154 podium finishes) . As I have mentioned before I admire greatness in sports and when someone is that good and that dominant it is great to see. A lot of people don’t like that and would prefer parody but I choose greatness over mediocrity. Now I will be the first to admit that maybe the reported $80 million a year in the last five seasons at Ferrari was pretty excessive and made him probably the highest paid athlete in the world but no one can argue with results. There is a lot of money in F1 and I suppose by comparison his salary makes some sense. Sure there are people out there that say that it is more the car then Shumi but they have not dominated the sport since he gave up his seat. Just like Jimmie Johnson, people say that it is the car that is the athlete not the driver, in some cases that may be true but putting Casey Mears into the 48 Lowes probably doesn’t win 3 consecutive Championships.
It will be interesting to see how Schumacher responds after such a long layoff. Is this going to be like Michael Jordan coming back to the Bulls the first time to still be the greatest or will he be Michael Jordan coming back as a Washington Bullet errr, Wizard. We will see during a Grand Prix coming to a major European City near you.
1 comment:
Wow! Schumacher is the reason I quite watching F1. It got very boring knowing that if he made it from pole position and out of turn 1 with the lead, the race was over. He was too good, too consistent, and I'm not a Ferrari fan.
Although both racers (Schumacher and Massa)are very noteworthy, the more compelling story is that of the return of Lewis Hamilton and the McLaren team. Hamilton was brilliant last season in capturing the title, and his car has finally started to catch up to Brawn and Red Bull.
Ferrari has also been coming on strong recently, it will be very interesting to see how Shumacher does. Maybe they're finally proving that KERS isn't such a bad thing afterall.
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