Working out how to drive a Formula 1 car.

Michael Schumacher may not be universally loved, but there is no doubt he was one of the strongest of his era. With Senna missing from the ranks after 1994, he had few long-term rivals while he was at his driving peak. My first introduction to Michael was when he came and drove for Benetton. Michael had driven the Jordan, which was a reasonable car but not as quick as the Benetton, and managed to qualify 7th at Spa in 1991 in his first GP. This was generally believed to be a remarkable achievement for a rookie. He then cooked the clutch at the start so did not even complete a lap. Not the most auspicious start to a Fomula 1 career after such a brilliant qualifying. Flavio Briatore (who ran Benetton at the time) immediately signed him and his first GP for “us” was at Monza where he finished 5th. 1991 was definitely a learning year for Michael.

Michael always had a very precise, consistent way of driving; he could adapt his style to suit whatever was necessary. He was also very analytical and extremely serious about his job. Out of the car he was a relatively normal intelligent human being. OK, at the race track he was "at work" and not always welcoming of light hearted humour when we had things to do. When he wasn’t at work you were able to crack jokes, talk to him about almost anything.

In the car he seemed to have the ability to drive the car with his driving brain while having plenty of spare mental capacity to record extra information or discuss strategy with his engineers. From feedback I had when I joined the team (when it was called Toleman Group Motorsport) this was something that Ayrton Senna also had. The team engineers were stunned in the early days that Michael could drive the car for 3 laps and tell them what the car did corner entry, mid-corner and corner exit – for each lap. At first we didn’t believe that he could accurately record all this information but, as the data logging improved, we were able to see what he was talking about and understood that, yes, he was able to actually record all this information in his head. You could look at the data but his comments were a faster way to receive the information, so, once you learned to believe him, you could set the car up more quickly because he would communicate the most important pieces of information immediately.

One of the early surprises was Michael trying to cope with a car that did not have traction control and trying to get the best out of it. One of the ways he described it was: he would push the accelerator to come out of the corner, the car would start to slide so he’d come off the “gas” again but this was happening faster than we could believe and, at the time, I think we were only logging the throttle position at 10 times per second. When we started logging the throttle position at higher frequencies, we could see what he was doing. We realised that he was pushing the car into a slide, the yaw rate would begin to increase, then he would back off the throttle and the yaw rate would begin to decrease until he would get back on the throttle again. Something we hadn’t seen at that speed before from other drivers.

One of the early things that he asked for was a speedometer. At first we all laughed at this – race drivers use the tacho (rpm meter). So he explained that the tacho was very useful, but... “If I come out of the corner in 3rd gear or I come out of the same corner in 2nd gear, I want to know whether it actually helps my acceleration. Do I reach a higher top speed or is the extra acceleration in 2nd lost due to harshness and when I change gear? If I change gear earlier in top gear, when the engine feels a bit flat, I want to know whether it helps my top speed. If I change the actual gear ratios, then all my references are gone if I’ve only got rpm.” So, to the rescue came Richard Marshall (Head of Electronics) and he gave Michael a digital speed display. It was added onto the cockpit rim in the driver’s line of sight. Richard was, and is, a cautious person (I’m a bit the opposite) and didn’t want to throw an extra data logger and displays onto the car without testing them first if it was possible to test somehow. So the hillclimb car we shared grew some extra sensors and displays within days of Michael’s request so that we could test the system at the weekend before it was transferred onto the F1 car for the following event.

1992 - Me (Willem) in the Peugeot 205 hillclimb car that I shared with Richard Marshall. Car was used as a test bed for electronic devices (not just for the speed display). Note pitot–static tube mounted on passenger side of car above the door. The motive for testing things on the Peugeot was to help the team do a better job at races – not to help us. Sometimes we also benefited, but Richard was employed at Benetton partly because he already had a data logger he’d designed himself on the hillclimb car and the F1 team needed to get up to date....

1993 Benetton with Michael Schumacher speed digital display at top of cockpit above steering wheel. Image courtesy of F1 Photo.com.

So Michael had his little remote speed display, he used it to help with his driving technique, but then he commented that he felt that it wasn’t quite as easy as he’d thought to read. He said: “In the middle of a corner, when I’m making the apex, it’s a bit hard to focus on the speed. Things are changing so quickly so you can’t really watch the speedo and be sure that you’ve seen the lowest speed. Then, if you want to watch your top speed at the end of the straight, it’s not so easy to watch there either because you’ve really got to be watching for your brake marker.” So what he said he would really like now was 3 speed displays. I suspect at this point we looked a bit puzzled so he explained what he wanted: “I’d like to keep the real-time speedo in the middle, where it is. Then on the left I would like a speed display that shows the minimum speed in a corner. It should hold that speed until I go for the brakes again. Then when I go for the brakes that can be reset to give me the new minimum speed. Then on the right I’d like another speed display to remember the maximum speed I reached until I’ve been flat on the throttle for a second or two so I can read the maximum speed from the previous straight”. Richard went back to work out how that could be done and gave Michael that arrangement. You can imagine that the displays themselves and the way they were configured went though some iterations.





Image Belgian Motorsport.com 1994 Benetton cockpit showing the configurable digital displays in the cockpit rim.

So we gave him those and then he started to play. He would experiment with ratios, driving styles, racing lines and also use it to assess setup changes. After a few years Michael decided he had worked out how to drive a F1 car "now" and didn’t need the speedos any more - that had been a learning exercise for him. (My friend Richard also pointed out that actually, the FIA rules on Driver Aids – even back then - meant we couldn’t run them after a while - there had been complaints).

A different post from me this time. If you have additional information that can add to this, please DO share it. Please share if you feel it is useful for other people to read.

There is a related article about Michael's amazing drive at Barcelona 1994.... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/1994-barcelona-amazing-schumacher-drive-background-willem-toet/

To view my other posts, look here :- https://www.linkedin.com/today/posts/willemtoet1