IT’S a device that is standard on the car in your garage. Essential, even. But you would be hard pressed to find one on a Formula 1 car, especially one from the early 1990s.

Speedometers simply weren’t used. Nor were they really needed. If a driver wanted a gauge of whether he was going faster or slower at a given point, he could look at the tachometer. More revs equalled more speed.

So it seemed a strange request from Benetton’s new star driver, a 22-year-old fresh-faced rookie named Michael Schumacher.

Australian-raised engineer Willem Toet, who since worked as a senior aerodynamicist at Ferrari, BAR/Honda and Sauber, was one of the crew entrusted with looking after Schumacher when the German burst onto the scene in 1991-92. Currently out of F1, Toet took to social media to tell a few stories from Schumacher’s formative years in the world championship.

“One of the early things that he asked for was a speedometer,” Toet wrote. “At first we all laughed at this — race drivers use the tacho.

“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. (For example) do I reach a higher top speed or is the extra acceleration in 2nd lost when I change gear?

“If I change the actual gear ratios, then all my references are gone if I’ve only got rpm.”

So at the height of the sport’s electronics arms race, amid the active suspension and traction control era, Benetton’s engineers also worked quickly to add a speedometer to their F1 car.

Schumacher at the wheel of Benetton’s actively suspended, traction controlled, 4-wheel-steering B193C. Source: Supplied

Although he found it helpful, he did find its use limited.

“He felt that it wasn’t quite as easy as he’d thought to read,” Toet continued.

“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.’”

His solution? More displays. Three of them, in fact.

“I suspect at this point we looked a bit puzzled,” Toet wrote. “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.’

The cockpit of a Benetton B194. The three displays are visible above the dash (R). Source: Supplied

“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 knew how to drive a F1 car now and didn’t need the speedos any more, but that was a learning exercise for him.”

Those speed displays would prove quite handy a few years later, playing a key role in a race that is renowned as one of Schumacher’s greatest.

Schumacher had won the first four races of F1’s tragic 1994 season and looked all but certain to add a fifth at the Spanish Grand Prix at Catalunya.

From pole position, the No. 5 Benetton had assumed its regular position at the front of the field, Schumacher building an almost 20-second lead as the first round of pit stops loomed.

“Michael radioed in to say that he was having intermittent gear selection problems,” Toet wrote.

“The team pitted the car a little earlier than they might have so they could have a quick look. Red oil was visible at the rear of the car. That’s hydraulic oil and Benetton were using that to actuate gear changes.

“The car was stuck in 5th gear. Imagine trying to start from the traffic lights in 5th gear in your road car. Quite a challenge.

“Michael managed it masterfully.”

The Benetton returned to the race in the lead, but he would have to drive the remaining two-thirds of the race with just the fifth gear of his car’s usual six available.

Schumacher would have to drive two-thirds of the race in just one gear. Source: Getty Images

“Michael radioed back the facts but also asked if he could try to drive with it for a while to see if he could find ways around the problem (and) the team agreed,” Toet explained.

“It was actually ‘lucky’ that it was stuck in 5th gear — 6th would have been too slow to accelerate out of the slower corners and 4th would have been too slow on the straights to allow for ‘competitive’ lap times. The team had the Cosworth-built Ford engine — not the most powerful in F1 by some margin, but really nice and drivable with sensible levels of torque at lower RPM.

“Michael quickly realised that he had no power to pull the car out of the slower corners so had to change his racing lines to carry more speed at the apex (slowest point) of the corners — not normally the fastest way in a Formula 1 car.

“A number of cars overtook Michael as he started to get his head around how to drive the car. He dropped to 3rd at one point but his lap times improved when he was running alone and with the pit stops of others, he pitted in the lead for his second and final pit stop.”

Schumacher was wringing the car’s neck through the corners. Despite having just one gear at his disposal, Schumacher was one of the fastest cars on the track. Now second only to Damon Hill, he maintained a seven-second gap to the Englishman for much of the final stint.

As Hill crossed the line to take an emotional victory for Williams, the team still reeling from the death of Ayrton Senna at Imola less than a month prior, an equally jubilant Benetton celebrated Schumacher’s incredible drive to second.

“Personally I thought it was amazing,” Toet surmised. “For Benetton it was like a win — and boosted the team’s confidence for the remainder of the season.

“There is no doubt in my mind that his sports car experience and his use of speed displays allowed him to get the best out of the car.”

Schumacher’s first win, Belgium 1992. Source: Supplied

Driving a Formula 1 car at its limit is mentally taxing enough; balancing all the information your eyes, ears, hands and backside are receiving from the car, the steering wheel and its surroundings, then making the decision as to what to do next, then performing that task with your hands and feet as you travel at speeds of up to 340km/h.

Now imagine also recalling every movement you and the car make on every lap you drive so you can regurgitate them and analyse them with your engineers afterwards. Then, on top of all that, try to absorb the information on three separate displays — plus keeping an eye on the tachometer, oil and water gauges. It’s multi-tasking at a hyper level.

The mind management required to do that is what separates the champions from the also-rans - and, to Toet’s eye, Schumacher looked very much like the former even in his early days.

“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,” Toet explained. “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 faster 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.”