October 22, 2006
Michael Schumacher had already spent two weeks with his back against the wall.
The tide would not turn in Brazil.
Fuel pressure issues ahead of the final round of qualifying forced Schumacher to start tenth in a race he had to win to take his eighth World Drivers' Championship. He also needed Fernando Alonso to fail to score points, something that had only happened twice to the Spaniard.
Three weeks earlier, Schumacher and Alonso were tied in the world championship. While Renault made a handful of strategical mistakes, Schumacher pulled off a masterful drive in the wet-to-dry conditions from sixth on the grid to take his 91st grand prix victory in the Chinese Grand Prix. His 91st victory put him and Alonso level on points with two races to go and the tiebreaker was in Schumacher's favor.
At Suzuka, a week after his 91st victory, Schumacher was holding serve. He started second to Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa and at the end of lap three, Schumacher had taken the lead. Alonso had qualified fifth and had to fight to the front. He had passed the Toyotas and leapfrogged Massa during the first pit cycle, but after the second pit cycle, Alonso continued to trail Schumacher by over five seconds as the race entered its final phase.
With 18 laps to go, it appeared Schumacher would have a cushion in Brazil after Alonso had dominated the championship up until the Asian swing. With 17 laps to go, Schumacher lost his engine heading under the bridge and Alonso took the lead. It was the first Ferrari engine failure since the 2000 French Grand Prix. Massa had been unable to keep up with the two championship contenders and was unable to two pressure Alonso or counter and at least take two points away from the Spaniard.
Alonso coasted to his first victory since the Canadian Grand Prix in June. His gap to Schumacher ballooned to ten points. A solitary point, an eighth-place finish, in Interlagos was all Alonso needed for his second consecutive world championship.
Schumacher could not afford for his 91st victory to be his final victory. A 92nd victory was necessary to walk away from Formula One as champion.
The qualifying issues created a bleak outlook on the German's title chances at the start of the Brazilian Grand Prix. Contact with Giancarlo Fisichella in the first ten laps did more than puncture Schumacher's left rear tire. It popped his championship aspirations and the 92nd career victory that had to go along with it.
From behind, Schumacher left it all out on the racetrack, charging from 19th at the end of lap 11 to fourth at the checkered flag 60 laps later, setting the fastest lap on the penultimate lap for good measure. He was 24 seconds behind Massa, who took a popular home victory. Alonso had a pleasant Sunday drive to second on a track and a second world championship in the history books.
When Schumacher walked away from Formula One after that October race, his 91 career victories were 40 more than Alain Prost in second. The best active driver was Alonso on 15 victories. David Coulthard was second best with 13 victories. No other active driver had more than nine victories. Schumacher's records, his seven world championships and his 91 victories appeared untouchable. No driver, not even Alonso fresh off consecutive world championship, was thought capable of re-creating the level of success Schumacher had, especially his final seven seasons with Ferrari.
October 22, 2006 was also the last time a Formula One race did not feature Lewis Hamilton.
Fourteen years later, Hamilton celebrated his 92nd grand prix victory under overcast Portuguese skies at the 73rd different circuit to host a Formula One race. A seventh World Drivers' Championship celebration is due for some time in the next month.
Juan Manuel Fangio at least had 45 years until someone matched him on championships. Literally, the next kid on the Formula One scene matched Schumacher's career, and Hamilton is not done yet.
How could this have happened? How could the untouchable be tossed aside in 14 years? How did Hamilton immediately duplicate a once-in-a-century career?
Schumacher had Ferrari. Hamilton had Mercedes.
That is the easiest way to define it, but it does overshadow an entire first act of Hamilton's career at McLaren.
For the first six seasons, Hamilton drove for the team that spotted him as a boy and he found great success from the start. He matched Jacques Villeneuve's record of four victories in a rookie season on his way to a runner-up championship finish, falling one point behind Kimi Räikkönen. As a sophomore, Hamilton picked up five more victories and won the world championship.
Every year Hamilton was with McLaren, he won multiple races. By the end of year six, he had 21 victories, 13th all-time, third amongst active drivers. Alonso had doubled his total but was still 61 victories behind Schumacher. Sebastian Vettel was in the middle of something special and up to 26 victories.
Schumacher also had two distinct phases of his career, except his Benetton phase was not nearly as long as Hamilton's stint at McLaren. Schumacher's career also started at the back end of 1991, first in a one-off with Jordan, before Benetton swooped in and locked up the German for the final four races.
In his first two full seasons at Benetton, Schumacher won one race a year. Eight victories and his first championship followed in 1994. Nine victories and a second championship came in 1995. Off two championships, Schumacher moved to Ferrari. From 1992 to 1997, Schumacher's first six full seasons, he won 27 races, tied with Jackie Stewart for fourth all-time.
Both drivers hit a low point in the middle of their careers. For Hamilton, it was his first year at Mercedes, a move proactively done ahead of the new turbo hybrid regulations due for the 2014 season. In 2013, Hamilton won only one race and only had five podium finishes on his way to finishing fourth in the world championship.
Schumacher's low point came after his broken leg in the 1999 British Grand Prix, which forced him to miss six races. Up to that point, he had won two of the first seven races and returned for the final two rounds to run block for Eddie Irvine, who was challenging Mika Häkkinen for the championship. Schumacher was runner-up in both races, lifting him to a fifth-place championship finish despite his absence.
Off of those low points, each driver hit their greatest period of success. Schumacher would win five consecutive championships and 48 victories in the process. After a down 2005 season, which saw one victory in the United States Grand Prix, Schumacher's final go with the Scuderia netted seven more victories.
Hamilton is on the verge of his sixth championship in seven years and has amassed 70 victories to break Schumacher's record. His fewest victories in season since 2014 is nine and he is currently on eight in what is a slightly truncated 2020 season compared to the original plan.
Schumacher reached his 91st victory in his 15th full season. This is Hamilton's 14th full season, however this 17-race 2020 schedule will only match the shortest championship of Hamilton's career. For Schumacher, 16 or 17 races was the norm. His first season with more than 17 races was 18 races in 2004. The only time he ran 20 races in a season was his final year in 2012 with Mercedes while Hamilton has run at least 20 races in five seasons.
Hamilton's 91st victory did come in his 261st start while Schumacher reached 91 victories in his 244th start. When you factor in that Hamilton runs about three more races per season compared to Schumacher, it seems only fitting it took 17 more races, basically an additional season, for Hamilton to reach the same milestone in one fewer season.
Longer schedules played a hand in Hamilton breaking this record, but Mercedes deserves recognition the same way Ferrari played into Schumacher's success.
For the second time in two decades, the best driver paired with the best team and in both cases historic accomplishments were achieved. This iteration of Mercedes does mirror the turn of the century Ferrari outfit. You have the driver who gets the spotlight, but the people behind the scenes are the best in the business.
Schumacher had Ross Brawn, Jean Todt and Rory Byrne. Hamilton has had Toto Wolff and Paddy Lowe. James Allison and Aldo Costa each played a significant role in the success for both these drivers. Strong technical sides allowed both drivers to achieve their greatness. That common thread of Allison and Costa linking the two perhaps deserves more attention than it gets. Costa's fingerprints are 14 World Constructors' Championship winning cars. Allison was around for Schumacher's final five championships and has been a part of Hamilton's dominance since 2017.
Reliability was on both their sides, removing that one hinderance that has diminished the résumés of many of their counterparts.
Schumacher went over six years between engine failures when one occurred at the worst possible time in 2006. From 2002 to 2004, he had two retirements, Brazil 2003 when he aquaplaned off course, and Monaco 2004 when Juan Pablo Montoya ran into the back of Schumacher under a safety car period while Schumacher was leading.
Since joining Mercedes in 2013, Hamilton has had eight retirements while Schumacher had 15 retirements from 2000 to 2006. Two of Hamilton's retirements came after contact with a teammate. Hamilton has not dropped out of a race since Austria 2018.
In both cases, it was a combination of timely moves and a collection of the top personnel in the business building the best car on the grid for the best driver in the world. Schumacher's move to Ferrari was a perfect storm. It didn't lead to a championship immediately, but it eventually panned out. Hamilton's move to Mercedes was criticized. Mercedes was not a race-winning organization ahead of the 2013 season. It appeared Hamilton was making a mistake and taking a huge risk.
Simultaneous to Hamilton's move was another period of dominance for a team and driver: Red Bull and Vettel. Heading into 2013, all the chips would have been on Vettel challenging Schumacher's records. He captured his fourth consecutive championship at the end of that season with nine consecutive victories. Vettel had four titles and 39 victories to Hamilton's one title and 22 victories.
In quick time, the turbo-hybrid era flipped everything. Mercedes knocked it out of the park while Red Bull struggled with the Renault engine. Mercedes avoided the pitfalls while Red Bull kept finding new ones. Red Bull's marriage to Vettel ended immediately after a dismal 2014 season. It alienated Renault, led to re-badging the engines as TAG Heuer and then led the team to Honda. While Red Bull has won some races, it has never come close to Mercedes.
Vettel joined Ferrari, following in the footsteps as his German idol, won some races and was a championship contender once until he went off track in the drizzle at Hockenheim. Mental errors litter Vettel's time at Ferrari and after six seasons he will leave Maranello for Aston Martin. After once being 17 victories ahead of Hamilton, Vettel trails Hamilton by 39 victories.
With Hamilton's success coming immediately on the heels of Schumacher historic run, maybe this is setting up a new trend for Formula One and instead of repeating the clichés of we will never see this again, we should be expecting someone else to rack up nearly 100 grand prix victories in the next 20 years.
If wasn't Hamilton, it very well could have been Vettel and Red Bull smashing the records last decade. We had seen periods of dominance before, but Schumacher and Ferrari elevated it to a new level. For the first four decades of Formula One, a manufacture could have a good two or three-year period but someone else would figure it out. From the start of the World Constructors' Championship in 1958 through 1987, only once did a manufacture take the title in three consecutive seasons, Ferrari from 1975 to 1977. There were six other instances of consecutive constructors' champions.
Since 1988, we have had eight periods of consecutive constructors' championships and five of those have been for three seasons or longer. McLaren won four consecutive constructors' championships at the end of the 1980s into the 1990s. Williams won five of six constructors' title during the 1990s. Ferrari took it to another level with six consecutive championships and eight in ten years at the end of the 2000s.
Red Bull would follow it with four consecutive and Mercedes is on its current tear, likely extending its streak to a record seven consecutive titles.
Mercedes will eventually come up short one year, but whoever is next up will likely hang around for a handful of years. There will likely be another driver to break into the 40-victory or 50-victory atmosphere. If that driver can replicate Hamilton's hit rate of 35.11%, then 91 victories and possibly 100 victories has some life if a driver runs 15 years and averages 20 grand prix a season.
Hamilton is not done. He will have a few years left in his career and he will likely raise the bar a little higher. He has still not signed up for the 2021 season, but we all think he will and if he does Hamilton will reach the century mark. When Hamilton is finished, the bar will be further out of reach than where Schumacher set it, but recent history is suggesting it is not unreachable.
