AGE WILL BE AGAINST HIM - BUT JUST ANOTHER FOE

+ Click to Enlarge DOCTOR WHO? Former World Drivers' champion Michael Schumacher, 40, with his personal doctor, Johannes Peil, during a news media conference in Geneva on August 12, 2009 intended to explain his decision not to return to Formula 1 as stand-in for injured Felipe Massa. Image: AFP

December 24, 2009
By Alan Baldwin

Formula 1 has moved on since Michael Schumacher retired in 2006, even if the German will be eager to roll back the years when he makes his comeback with Mercedes in 2010...

Despite turning 41 in January that year, the seven-times World champion can be expected to show the same passion for racing, the same hunger for winning, the same ruthless determination.

"I was tired of F1 by the end of 2006... but after three years of absence I am sort of getting back all the energy and I'm feeling strong right now," he said on Wednesday. "I played around with motorbikes but I'm ready for some serious stuff."

Age will be against him, another foe to overcome for a driver who always prided himself on being one of the fittest and most professional on the grid, but nobody should rule out what would be a remarkable return to the top.

He is teaming up again with close friend Ross Brawn, the technical director who guided him to all his titles with Benetton and Ferrari, and that won eight of the 17 races last season as well as both championships.

Mercedes will also feel like home, the future champion having started out in sports cars with the German automaker.

World champion Damon Hill said recently: "If I could win a race when I was 37 in a Jordan then Michael can definitely win a race in a Ross Brawn car at 41."

Schumacher said he was thrilled to be back and still felt "absolutely on the edge".

"This year, when I got back in a kart, I was immediately on the pace. I have to prove it, of course, but all the people (at Mercedes) have no doubt about my ability."

Brazilian Lucas di Grassi, who will have his debut with Virgin Racing in 2010, has seen that after racing against Schumacher in a recent karting event in Brazil that the German won.

"He's the most competitive guy I know," said Di Grassi. "Everybody I know goes there (to the karting event) to have a good time and enjoy it and have fun. Michael goes there and spends two hours making a seat one millimetre higher."

Schumacher can expect no favours from rivals nearly half his age, men eager to measure themselves against a true great. Kimi Raikkonen, his immediate successor at Ferrari, has moved to rallying but the German will find his previous nemesis, Fernando Alonso, at the wheel of the red car that he once commanded.

It was Alonso who won the last two championships in which Schumacher competed and the Spaniard has only grown in experience since then.

BACK TO F1 OF 1991

Britain's 2008 World champion Lewis Hamilton had not even made his debut when Schumacher hung up his helmet in Brazil in 2006; neither had this year's runner-up and fellow-German Sebastian Vettel.

Current champion Jenson Button, Schumacher's direct predecessor at Brawn/Mercedes, is almost unrecogniseable from the challenger of a few years back.

The sport is moving back to the F1 that Schumacher entered in 1991, with reduced budgets and private teams in a majority. The manufacturers' domination is on the wane, with Honda, BMW and Toyota all leaving during 2009.

There is no testing - and powerhouses such as Ferrari and McLaren will have to slim down under agreed cost-cutting measures.

WHAT WAS A JOKE COMES TRUE

Mercedes is ahead of the game there, with Brawn already in fighting trim after its emergence from the ruins of departed Honda, and its engine was the best of 2009.

Mercedes' motorsport vice-president Norbert Haug said: "Our sporting ambition has always been that Michael should drive again where his professional career had started and Michael knew that.

"We often joked about it after races and discussed the prospect seriously several times during the last 14 years in F1. It didn't happen in 1995, it didn't happen in 1998, it didn't happen in 2005.

"I'm delighted that it will now happen in 2010." - Reuters