Undisputed King of the Formula One Circuit

Michael Schumacher cried. Members of the Ferrari pit crew cried. Hundreds of thousands of his fans across Germany and Italy shed tears as well.

“Everyone cried a little bit,” said Ferrari team technical director Ross Brawn.

They cried tears of joy, for their man not only captured the Grand Prix of France on Sunday, but the overall Formula One championship, with still six races remaining. The crown makes Schumacher, 33, only the second driver in history, along with Argentine legend Juan Manuel Fangio, to win five Forumla One season titles. The two are also the only drivers to win three seasons in a row.

The achievement cements Schumacher, who has re-written the sport’s record books virtually since his 1991 Formula One debut at the age of 22, as one of Formula One’s great drivers.Even if his colleagues on the racetrack might not like it.

The same brilliant and calculating persona that has allowed him unprecendented success in the sport and launched a Formula One craze in Germany has earned him many critics among fellow drivers and race fans. His former teammate at Benneton-Ford, for which he drove before Ferrari, called him a “rotten egg."

“He would do anything to achieve,” his goals, Johnny Herbert told the British newspaper independent last year.

Dangerous and unpredictable

Driver Jacques Villeneuve said last year that racing with Schumacher is a guessing game, “because you never know what he’s going to do.”

The French-Canadian knows perhaps best of all. In 1997, in the championship-deciding final race, Schumacher, in second place, allegedly tried forcing season leader Villeneuve off the track. The ploy backfired and Villeneuve went on to win both the race and the season. Formula One’s governing body stripped Schumacher of his season points and the vice world championship and sparked the war of words that the two have been waging ever since.

It wasn’t the first time Schumacher had run afoul of colleagues. During his first championship winning season in 1994, he was disqualified from two races and evoked scorn from other drivers when he reacted too flippantly to the death of his biggest rival and racing champion Aryton Senna in the second race of the season.

As the entire racing world lay in shock, Schumacher told reporters that in racing “there will always be accidents.”

Frigid egomaniac, but boy can he drive

The incidents have earned Schumacher a reputation as cold-hearted egomaniac among many in the racing business, an image he has tried desperately to change since beginning his rise in Formula One.

But though criticism of his personal character is widespread, no one dare comment on his driving.

The Kerpen-native, who was competing in races on his father’s go-cart track near Cologne before the age of five, is widely admired for his technical skill and his willingness to take risks. He is roundly admired for making mediocre cars, like his racers at Benneton Ford in 1994 and 1995, perform like championship cars.

The leader of a revolution

His talents sparked an unprecendented Formula One madness in Germany in the early 1990s paralleled only by the tennis craze launched by Boris Becker and Steffi Graf. Almost 1,000 “Schumi” diehards made the pilgrimmage to Kerpen on Sunday to watch and celebrate his victory in France in the driver’s hometown. And more than 11 million Germans tuned in to watch Schumacher cross the finish line first.

German newspapers blanket-cover his every move. Schumacher responded by polishing his public image, ensuring that he came off squeaky-clean and controversy-free. The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote mockingly of his “streamlined, rehearsed forever-smile.”

When he switched to Ferrari in 1996, his two-year $70 million (69.4 million euro) contract made him the highest-earning driver in history. His pay has increased with his victories. He has a fleet of cars, a top-of-the-line go-cart track and keeps homes in Norway and Switzerland, which with its lax tax laws and high level of privacy has become his adopted homeland since 1996.

The Robot cries

He could adopt Italy as well and it would be glad to have him. Before his arrival, Ferrari last won a Forumla One Championship in 1979. In the past three years, Schumacher and his tight-knit team have given them three.

Italian racing fans are equally crazy about Schumacher. The German has responded by infusing his rigid, polished German exterior with a little bit of Italian emotiveness.

He celebrated his 2000 victory with tears of joy, prompting one Italian newspaper to rejoice that “The Robot cries, because he has become human.”

He has since been a darling of the Italian press, not least because he speaks excellent Italian.

Following Sunday’s race, Schumacher gushed “I love you all,” to his teammates at Ferrari, before shedding tears himself.

Why stop now?

The tears of joy aren’t likely to be the last shed by the living racing legend. Ferrari and Schumacher have agreed to extend his contract to 2004.

The team boss has said Schumacher can drive for him as long as he wants. There is already talk of winning a sixth, maybe a seventh title in the coming years.

Somebody get out the handkerchiefs.