The sad decline of Schumacher and Ecclestone

SALVATORE DI NOLFI/AP

Former Formula One superstar Michael Schumacher, right, next to his physician Johannes Peil, explains to the press this week that he has withdrawn any plans to get back in the hunt for Ferrari due to motorcycling injuries.

Norris McDonald

MOTORSPORT WRITER

The world has had its share of tragic figures. Richard Nixon comes to mind. Ditto Michael Jackson.

You could add Michael Schumacher and Bernie Ecclestone to the list.

While there was something noble about Schumacher's attempt to return to the F1 wars at age 40, it was also sad to watch. Why would a guy who did everything there was to do in the sport, and then left it when he was at the very top of the mountain, want to keep doing it?

Had he not moved on?

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Most world champions – the vast majority of those who survived, anyway – left the cockpit and tackled other things; started other projects. In short, they grew.

Jackie Stewart is a successful international businessman and entrepreneur, So are Emerson Fittipaldi (orange plantations), Niki Lauda (airlines), Jody Scheckter (organic cattle farming) and Nigel Mansell (property development), among others.

Schumacher retired to – nothing. He agreed to stay on with Ferrari as an "adviser" but, after a while, he was not much more than a fifth wheel. His mates were all gone (from Ross Brawn owning his own F1 team to Jean Todt trying to run the FIA) and the team really didn't have anything for him to do anyway, so he's pretty much been left standing around.

Now, he's a wonderful guy. He's a good husband and father, supports dozens of charities to which he's donated tens of millions of dollars and represents UNESCO in Europe. He also speaks in public about driver safety.

But that's just marking time; he's not really doing anything.

Which explains why he jumped – jumped – at the chance to get back into action. And that's a shame.

It's a lesson for us all. At some point in time, whether you're a schoolteacher or a waiter or a world driving champion, you're going to find out you can't identify yourself with your work any longer and you had better have another role ready to step into.

Or else you could wind up like Michael Schumacher – kind of lost.

Ecclestone, on the other hand, has stayed well past his best-before date and is being treated more as an eccentric and a buffoon these days than as the most powerful man in Formula One.

Whether he is still the most powerful man, of course, is debatable. He now owns less than 10 per cent of F1 (he used to own it all, or most of it) and although he boasts the title of chairman of the Formula One Group, he still has to report to the board of directors of CVC Capital Partners (the real owners).

In short, the "boss" has a boss.

He is 78 years old and he's lonely. His wife of 25 years divorced him this year and that, coupled with his diminished responsibilities in the sport he has totally devoted his life to, makes him a sitting duck for reporters snooping around for a story.

He reminds me of the late Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard. Ballard had the worst hockey team in the NHL for most of the 1970s and '80s. He was regularly baited about this by two of Toronto's better-known sports writers, who knew how to get a story out of him when there wasn't anything better to write about.

That's the way it is these days with Ecclestone. One minute he's praising Ferrari, the next he's threatening to sue them. But it was his comments about Adolf Hitler that got him into real trouble.

Telephoned by a reporter from The Times of London for a story on racing, Ecclestone was asked – in the context of the troubles FIA chief Max Mosley has experienced in recent years – who he thought made the best political leader.

Bernie initially said Margaret Thatcher, but after noting that she had left the scene, he suggested the best leaders were often dictatorial and that Hitler was a good example because he was "able to get things done."

He got a public dressing down for that. In fact, Sir Martin Sorrell, who's a Formula One Group board member, said that Bernie was lucky he still had a job.

Ecclestone has vowed not to wander too far from the subject of racing from now on.

But don't bet on it.

Like Ballard, he's vulnerable. When you're old and alone, and somebody phones you up late in the evening for a chat – well, there you go. You've got somebody to listen to you and you know you will get your name in the paper if you say something outrageous. You can prove to yourself that you're still a somebody, even if fewer and fewer people think so.

When you look at Bernie Ecclestone and all that he's been and what he's becoming, it's really right out of Shakespeare.

And Shumacher? Unless there's a change, he could be a case study in how the mighty have fallen.

Norris McDonald wraps up racing every Monday and writes a blog at Wheels.ca. nmcdonald@thestar.ca

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