Before his Formula One debut, Schumacher learned Spa on a folding bike
Michael Schumacher arrived at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1991 having only ever watched the Spa-Francorchamps circuit as a spectator. His teammate was too busy to show him around, so he rode the track on a foldable bicycle. Then he qualified seventh in a midfield Jordan he had tested for half a day.
Schumacher was born in Hürth, West Germany, in 1969, to a bricklayer father who later ran the local kart track and a mother who worked its canteen. At four, his father bolted a small motorcycle engine to his pedal kart; after the boy crashed it into a lamp post, his parents took him to the Kerpen track, where his father built him a kart from scrap. When a new 800-mark engine proved unaffordable, local businessmen stepped in. Because German rules required kart drivers to be 14, he got his first licence in Luxembourg at 12.
By 1987 he was German and European kart champion and had left school to work as a mechanic. He then won the Formula König series and the 1990 German Formula Three title, and joined Mercedes's sportscar programme rather than the usual Formula 3000 route. His manager argued that press conferences and long races in powerful cars would teach him more. He gave his controversial 1990 Macau Grand Prix prize money to his family to pay off debts.
Mercedes paid Jordan 150,000 dollars to give him that 1991 debut, and after one race Benetton signed him; Jordan's attempt to block the move in court failed. His first win came at Spa in 1992, the last Grand Prix won by a car with an H-pattern manual gearbox. Titles followed in 1994 and 1995. He then joined a struggling Ferrari, and in 2000 ended the team's 21-year wait for a drivers' crown, adding four more by 2004, when he won 13 of 18 races.
His career brought seven championships, later matched by Lewis Hamilton, alongside 91 wins and 68 poles at retirement and a still-standing record of 77 fastest laps. Rivals noted his relentless fitness regime and a hunger to win that could spill into collisions, as with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997, which cost him that season's result.
Source: Michael Schumacher
