After retiring in 2006, Michael Schumacher made the decision to return to the Formula 1 grid in 2010, taking the motorsport world by storm. He would be partnering Nico Rosberg at Mercedes, the emerging team having taken over Brawn GP after their 2009 Championship win with Jenson Button.
Despite a hotly anticipated return to his dominance of years gone by, Schumacher never won again, stuck in the midfield before retiring once and for all after the 2012 season. But why did the 7-time World Championship never see the top step of the podium again?
Why Michael Schumacher’s gamble didn’t pay off
What may have been an exciting new venture never quite came to fruition for the German World Champion. Mercedes was a new team, still developing and finding their place in the sport. Meanwhile, fellow countryman
Sebastian Vettel was dominating the track with Red Bull, winning four back-to-back Championships with the Austrian team between 2010 and 2013.
Elsewhere on the grid, McLaren had World Champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button on their team, and the Mercedes drivers could not match the pace of the front-running teams around them. The first three cars that Mercedes built were simply not competitive enough, and they became the dreaded ‘best of the rest’ team.
2012 Season: Michael Schumacher vs Nico Rosberg
2012 · P13
2012 · P9
Rosberg consistently outperformed Schumacher, adapting better to upgrades and developments, and even the new Pirelli tyres, which demanded a different driving style than Schumacher was used to. His signature driving style did not align with the nature of the Pirelli tyres, introduced in 2011, which required more delicate handling, and Schumacher often wore through them faster than desired by the pit wall.
It was Rosberg that took the teams maiden win in 2012, and even after that victory, the performance declined across the season and the team struggled to fight for podiums. It wasn’t until 2013, after Schumacher had retired once more, that the team saw steady progress, which propelled them towards total domination that lasted from 2014 until 2021.
Was Michael Schumacher too old to make a comeback or was it just bad luck?
When Schumacher returned to F1, he was 41 years old and past his prime, as displayed during his stint at Ferrari. It’s possible that the German driver experienced a natural decline in his performance, impacting his reaction times and physicality, but we have seen in recent years that older drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso have continued to perform at the highest level.
During his time at Mercedes, the team suffered a lot of growing pains and arguably, bad luck. Schumacher’s best chance at a win came in Monaco in 2012, but was scuppered after a grid penalty took him out of contention. Reliability issues also plagued the team as they sacrificed short-term development in order to prepare for the new era of regulations in 2014.
