The seven times world champion was at the wheel of the 2011 Mercedes, the only top team not to bring its new car to the first test.

After some early fast laps by Red Bull’s Mark Webber, Schumacher lowered the bar set by Raikkonen yesterday to the mid 1m 18s, substantially faster than the same car managed at an early stage in 2011. This shows the development a car goes through in the course of a year. Red Bull’s Christian Horner has estimated the improvement of a car from a front running team at around two seconds from pre-season test to last Grand Prix of the year.

Schumacher was using the old Mercedes to evaluate the new Pirelli tyres and today soft and medium compounds were tried out by many teams. These are new tyres for 2012, with only the supersoft from 2011 remaining in Pirelli’s range this year.

Yesterday’s pace setter Raikkonen spent much of the morning in the Lotus garage after going off track into the gravel on an early run.

Webber was second fastest while Toro Rosso’s new boy Dan Ricciardo continues to go well in third ahead of the Force India car which was driven today by reserve driver Jules Bianchi. But the times are not yet really significant as there are various programmes at work in these early stages with the new cars.

Ferrari and McLaren continues to take their time to get up to speed. Everyone has different programmes to work through in these early days, depending on the nature of their car. Ferrari, for example, has more work than the others in terms of measuring the car’s behaviour and understanding it because it is a completely new design, a total break from the past. Most other cars are an evolution of a design philosophy from last year.

The teams need to make sure that the aerodynamic data on the track matches the data coming from the wind tunnel – this was an area where Ferrari struggled last year, for example at this early stage. Then there are new electronic systems to check over, loads passing through Ferrari’s radical new pullrod front and rear suspension need to be measured and understood. There is a lot to do before the team can start to chase some performance from it.

Exhausts
One area where there will be a lot of development for everyone over the next month is in the position of the exhausts. These have been moved by regulation, to outlaw the exhaust blown diffusers of the last two seasons. Now they must be placed, higher, further towards the front of the car and the exits must be round.

Everyone was cagey about this before testing started, with McLaren even launching its car with fake exhausts! Engineers say that the final position of the exhausts for most teams won’t be defined until the end of the testing season.

There are a number of different interpretations on view in Jerez, although nothing radical so far. Ferrari designer Nicolas Tombazis told Gazzetta dello Sport yesterday that there is nothing on any car which Ferrari hasn’t thought of.

Red Bull has the lowest exhausts, below the rear suspension arm, still working with part of the floor at least. Many teams are blowing across the bottom element of the rear wing, McLaren have their exhausts well forward in the sidepods, Lotus Renault have a straightforward exhaust exit of the kind we saw in F1 a few years ago.

Jerez Testing: Day 2

1 Schumacher Mercedes 1m18.561s 132 laps
2 Webber Red Bull 1m19.184s +0.623 97 Laps
3 Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m19.587s +1.026 100 Laps
4 Bianchi Force India 1m20.221s +1.660 46 Laps
5 Raikkonen Lotus 1m20.239s +1.678 117 Laps
6 Di Resta Force India 1m20.272s +1.711 69 Laps
7 Massa Ferrari 1m20.454s +1.893 95 Laps
8 Button McLaren 1m20.688s +2.127 85 Laps
9 Perez Sauber 1m20.711s +2.150 67 Laps
10 Maldonado Williams 1m21.197s +2.636 97 Laps
11 Kovalainen Caterham 1m21.518s +2.957 139 Laps
12 De la Rosa HRT 1m22.128s +3.567 64 Laps

“I have great respect for him, he’s one of the greatest or the greatest in our sport,” said Alonso. “The numbers are there and impossible to repeat for us. It’s been a great pleasure to drive with him all these years. I will always remember all the battles with him. It was a priviledge to drive against Michael Schumacher.

“He decided to stop and then come back and now the car is not competitive enough for him to win races, but I’m sure he is still enjoying. There are some criticisms about his results now but I don’t agree with them. Michael was watching the races at home three years ago, now he’s seventh or ninth, but I’m sure he is happy every morning because he is racing in F1. It’s what he wants to do; he’s a driver.

“Twenty years are a lot. If I think of myself it would be 2021 and I don’t think I can do that! I want to congratulate him for these 20 years and tell him it’s a pleasure to race against him.”

The Spaniard wasn’t always so gushing. In 2006 when Schumacher spun during qualifying in Monaco, preventing his rival from taking pole from him, Alonso told Mark Webber at dinner that if the stewards did not punish Schumacher he would lie down on the grid in front of Schumacher’s car to symbolise that the German “rides all over the other drivers”.

In the event this was not necessary as the stewards ruled that Schumacher had spun on purpose and put him at the back of the grid.

Perhaps thinking of this and other moments he wishes hadn’t happened, Schumacher was in philosophical mood this afternoon,

“Taking the 20 years, taking everything that I’ve been doing…. certainly, going backwards, I would do certain things differently, but then in life you have to make some mistakes in order to understand it is a mistake and to sort of set your guidelines..

“All in all, I guess the vest that I’m wearing, that I’m wearing inside me, is pretty white, and I’m pretty happy about this. I don’t have many regrets and overall, I certainly feel very excited and proud of what has happened.”

Earlier he had said, “The rulebook always leaves you certain grey zones and leaves you clear guidelines at some moments. You have always to adapt to those guidelines and to those changes and that’s obviously the limits that you search for and occasionally you may overstep (those limits) and you may take the penalty for it.”

There was a strong show of support and respect for Schumacher from his fellow drivers today. Sebastian Vettel called him his “childhood hero”. Realising he was getting too gushing, he changed tack and said, “I think he’s an OK driver!”

Schumacher’s former team mate Felipe Massa spoke about when he was a boy in Brazil and Schumacher seemed to him to be a phenomenon, taking on and beating the national hero Ayrton Senna in 1994.

“He was first in the championship and I remember Michael very strong and he became very famous in Brazil because he was a young guy who was already quicker than Ayrton,” said Massa.

I asked him to clarify this point; did he really mean to say that in his opinion Schumacher was quicker than Senna?

He took the opportunity to clarify; “I meant he was already breaking Senna’s balls,” laughed the Brazilian. “Senna had more pole positions but Michael was ahead in the championship. I don’t believe Michael was quicker than Senna, no. I think Senna was the most incredible qualifier ever, but I put both on the same level (in terms of speed).”

Schumacher becomes the first F1 driver in history to still be active 20 years after his debut. He also took his first F1 win at Spa in 1992. It is also 17 years since he was disqualified from victory in the 1994 race for having worn down the plank under his floor too much, and 7 years ago at Spa he clinched his 7th world title.

“Everything for me comes back to Spa. The race will certainly have a special touch to it this time, as this is where I drove my first ever Formula One race 20 years ago,” said Schumacher. “It’s hard to believe that this was such a long time ago. A lot has changed in those 20 years, but one thing has not: the track is still sensational. I just love the great nature of the location and the resulting layout with all the ups and downs. To me, Spa remains my ‘living room’, because it has been the stage for so many things which have been remarkable for my sporting career.”

42 years old and still smiling (Darren Heath)

Spa has also many other memories for him; his astonishing battle with Mika Hakkinen in 2000, his win in 1995 from nowhere on the grid, the collision with Coulthard, the list is endless. As a six times winner of the race and many other podiums there, it’s the place which is probably most synonymous with him as a racer.

I remember his debut as if it were yesterday. He was on the pace immediately, in fact I was standing at the top of Eau Rouge with the legendary writer Denis Jenkinson and Schumacher caught his attention straight away for his commitment through the high speed corner. In those days before it was modified and made easier, it was not a simple flat-out corner, it was a huge challenge.

At the end of Friday practice Jenks gave me what he thought was the top five based on simply seeing cars go through Eau Rouge and Schumacher was among them. When we got to the press office and studied the times, his top five order was exactly right!

There was a lot of hype around the young German and within a fortnight he had been poached by Tom Walkinshaw and Flavio Briatore to drive for Benetton, with whom he went on to win two world titles in 1994 and ’95.

Of course it’s not an unbroken sequence of 20 years, as he had three years of retirement before deciding to comeback. He’s already said that he will do the third year of his three years with Mercedes, despite a disappointing lack of results.

All eyes will be on Schumacher and his unique celebration this weekend.

Here’s a Mercedes generated interview with Schumacher, which looks back at 1991, but also asks him some searching questions about his comeback and his performance against Nico Rosberg

The seven times world champion seemed to be relishing the improved competitiveness of the Mercedes car in free practice, but wasn’t able to deliver the expected lap time in Q3 when it mattered.

Photo: Mercedes

In the Mercedes motorhome for the team press briefing afterwards he seemed quite down about it. He couldn’t explain why the performance hadn’t been there, he’d just not had the grip he wanted.

His race was affected by a collision with Vitaly Petrov soon after the start, which knocked his front wing off. Petrov went on to finish 8th, but Schumacher was 12th,

“I guess I was responsible for the result that I had,” he said after the race. “With Petrov, I guess it was mostly my mistake what happened there. I need to analyse it, as it was a bit strange that suddenly we got together and I lost my front wing, but the race was a given from there – lots of fighting, lots of action, but for nothing.”

Schumacher effectively lost 30 seconds having to make that early stop for a new nose. If you take 30 seconds away from his finishing time, he would have been somewhere around 6th place Jenson Button, whose pace was slow at the end on worn tyres, so the collision was costly.

Last year he had a tough time coming back after three years away and finding that the Bridgestone tyres, with weak fronts and strong rears, just didn’t suit his way of driving. To some extent he was powerless to change his own fortunes.

But when the results don’t come in a competitive car, then a driver asks himself questions.

This year the Pirellis are the other way around, stronger at the front than the rear and he has been quite quick in races.

With a car which was capable of qualifying third in Rosberg’s hands and looked like Red Bull’s closest competitor over a single lap, he clearly expected more and was disappointed not to be able to deliver it.

He probably accepts that due to his age and time out of racing he’s a few tenths slower than Rosberg, but the Mercedes could turn out to be a contender this year and you can always tell when a driver gets a sniff that there may be a chance to do something special. Schumacher needs a podium at the least to make the comeback worthwhile, to give it some real justification.

We have to be careful when ex drivers of a similar age to Schumacher say that his age has nothing to do with it, as Johnny Herbert has said this week, for instance, or Jacques Villeneuve has said several time. It is in their interests to say that as they are all hoping to get paid well to drive competitive cars in their 40s. I don’t think that Rosberg, Vettel and Hamilton are “better” than Schumcher, they are just better than he is now.

If he feels that the joy isn’t there at the moment, then the main reason for the comeback is undermined. He missed racing and so he came back to enjoy himself.

I don’t go along with people who say that he’s damaging his legacy. He won seven world titles in his prime, no-one can take that away from him. There are one or two problems with his legacy anyway, due to controversies he got himself into, but what’s happening now has no impact on what he achieved before to my mind.

This period of return has simply been an epilogue, which has yet to find its sense of purpose.

As to whether this will hasten his second retirement from F1, who knows? He is still Michael Schumacher and his name and status are still of huge value to Mercedes. He has a contract to the end of 2012, that’s another 35 races at least.

There are stories of Mercedes priming Paul di Resta for the seat as soon as next year, but he still has to develop and show consistently some of the quality he showed in the first three races.

Di Resta had a tough weekend in Turkey, incidentally, due to the death of his step-father, Dougie McCracken, who lived with Di Resta’s mother in Scotland and who had apparently committed suicide according to the Daily Record newspaper.

Meanwhile here’s something new, a video blog from Nico Rosberg. He’s going to do one after every race, which is a good idea and something we must hope all drivers will get into in time.

Schumacher set the 1m 20.352 on the second lap of a ten lap run, but suffered significant drop off in performance on the rest of the run. His final three laps were in the 1m 24s.

In contrast Red Bull’s Mark Webber never went for a fast lap, but his sequences of laps showed less differential between times. The same was true of Felipe Massa in the Ferrari F150th Italia, which looks to be kind on its tyres, like its predecessor.

Witnesses trackside said that Webber was following Schumacher on a long run in the afternoon and had to frequently drop back to create space before closing up again. The Red Bull was visibly superior under braking and in the faster corners.

Jenson Button had his first run in the new McLaren and was very upbeat about it afterwards, telling reporters that he felt the car was a step up. He used KERS today for the first time in his career. He also tried out the adjustable rear wing, although not on a timed lap and he kept his mirrors trained on the wing during his evaluation run to monitor its movement.

Williams have been having a miserable Jerez test. Yesterday the car covered just 14 laps after various teething problems and today the car spent three and a half hours in the garage with a KERS related problem. In addition to that Pastor Maldonado went off and recovered three times at the chicane before crashing the car.

Sergio Perez also had an accident in the Sauber in the afternoon, bringing his running to an end.

Tomorrow Nick Heidfeld will drive the Renault as he auditions for the role left by Robert Kubica.

Additional reporting: Tom Clarkson

JEREZ TEST, DAY 2
1. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m20.352s 112 laps
2. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m20.413s + 0.061s 116 laps
3. Jenson Button McLaren 1m21.009s + 0.657s 69 laps
4. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1m21.214s + 0.862s 72 laps
5. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m21.613s + 1.261s 113 laps
6. Adrian Sutil Force India 1m21.780s + 1.428s 73 laps
7. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m21.857s + 1.505s 56 laps
8. Timo Glock Virgin 1m22.208s + 1.856s 57 laps
9. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m22.493s + 2.141s 65 laps
10. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m22.591s + 2.239s 38 laps
11. Jarno Trulli Lotus 1m23.216s + 2.864s 40 laps

Some of you have got into a debate about what were Schumacher’s best years and it struck me that we should enlarge that debate.

There are several phases to choose from; the early Benetton years where he challenged Senna, won in his first full season aged 23 and won two world titles and 19 victories.

Then there were the hungry years at Ferrari from 1996 to 1999, where the title eluded him but he had some amazing races. He won 16 times during these years.

The 2000 to 2004 seasons where he finally won the title for Ferrari and then went on to be more or less unbeatable were the most successful, obviously with 49 wins.

And then there were the two odd seasons in 2005 and 2006, the final years with eight wins and one final tilt at the title against younger opposition.

I’d be interested to know what people think.

Just to be clear on one thing from my post last week: when I was talking about how in the Ferrari days he was able to get everything how he wanted it, with loads of testing and tyres that he could develop, I wasn’t suggesting that this is why he was successful in his first career. He would have been successful anyway.

But it’s one of the key reasons why he was SO successful.

The seven times world champion has had a torrid time this season, scoring 76 points less than his young team mate Nico Rosberg and generally being outpaced by him everywhere. The old Schumacher, who’s presence always dominated the paddock and the race track during race weekends, is a far more anonymous competitor these days. It is often easy to forget that he’s in the field.

The reason why he has struggled is because what he has around him now isn’t what he enjoyed for many years with Ferrari, where there was unlimited testing and he could fine tune both chassis and tyres to his needs. Ferrari had a development contract with Bridgestone and so Schumacher was able to get the tyres exactly how he wanted them.

He took a calculated gamble to come back this season with no testing and it seems that he underestimated the effect it would have on his performance. Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn has defended him in the face of a rather odd one main campaign by former team owner Eddie Jordan, using his BBC platform, to say that Schumacher should be sacked and in any case will not race next year. The team is mystified as to why he should be taking such a stand on this issue.

Speaking to the F1.com website, Brawn said, “If you take the telemetry data in fast corners or his reaction time when the car breaks away, I don’t see any difference [to before his retirement]. There he’s still the old Michael,” said Brawn.

“But in the slow corners he cannot make full use of the tyres as Nico can. Nico has put the bar very high in this respect. But I guess that’s okay for Michael as he clearly sees where he has to improve. I predict that in 2011 we will again see the true Michael – when we’ve delivered him a better car.”

And that is the key to it. The 2010 Mercedes suffers from the fact that it was developed by a Brawn team that had limited resources and much of them were being directed at winning last year’s championship.

The key question is whether Mercedes will be able to deliver a good enough car next season. The team’s track record as Honda wasn’t fantastic, the 2005 and 2006 cars being the only good ones and the Brawn’s success last year owed a lot to starting the season with a controversial and well developed double diffuser, which rivals then had to copy.

The other key component for Schumacher will be the new Pirelli tyres. Here he will be helped by the fact that it’s a level playing field for everyone. But if they don’t fit in with his driving style, as the current Bridgestones do not, he could be struggling again. This is a secondary point to the chassis, which is the most important. But it’s significant nevertheless.

(Photo:Darren Heath)

Brawn shed some more light on why Schumacher struggles on these tyres in the F1.com interview, “Michael’s driving style depends on a strong front tyre that can withstand his hard braking and the steering manoeuvres that he prefers,” Brawn explained. “Nico has simply understood better how to handle these front tyres.

“I have to say that this year’s front tyre is very uncommon. That stems from the fact that the FIA wanted to promote KERS and had asked Bridgestone to develop tyres that would fit a certain weight distribution and thus create a specific tyre characteristic.”

All of this is also forcing a re-evaluation of Rosberg’s talents. At Williams alongside Webber and Nakajima he did not look anything particularly special, but this season he has really come of age and put in many strong performances across qualifying and race. Schumacher’s powers have waned in the years since he retired, but Rosberg is on it.

Brawn admits in the interview that if it were any other driver, he would not be retained. Schumacher needs a good car next year to salvage some dignity from his comeback. A few wins would be ideal, but even some podiums would enable to say that that the comeback was worthwhile on balance and that he enjoyed it. It is for this reason that it makes no sense for him to stop at the end of 2010.

The risk is that he gets another bad car next year and the poor results continue. Then he – and Mercedes – would be forced into some tough decisions during the season.

The first three tests were carried out by Heidfeld, with Grosjean taking over for the recent fourth test. But current F1 drivers will be relieved that the role has now been given to De la Rosa, who has a wealth of experience as a development driver with McLaren, a role he relinquished only this year to take up the race opportunity with Sauber.

Heidfeld spoke about the tests today briefly, on his return to competitive action with Sauber, explaining that he had worked on constructions and compounds. But he was not giving away any insights into how the tyres behave. Something many people would love to get a read on.

Having consulted with several engineers, it seems that Heidfeld’s knowledge will be useful to Sauber’s design engineers at this stage, as the tyre construction in particular is not likely to change significantly between now and the Abu Dhabi test in November at which all the teams and drivers will get their hands on the new rubber for the first time.

Heidfeld made it clear that he has come back to Sauber only for the remaining five races and that 2011 is still completely open.

Meanwhile one man who has a significant interest in the way the Pirelli’s are developing is Michael Schumacher, who worked alongside Heidfeld at Mercedes for half of this season. He spoke this evening about the subject. His difficulties this season have revolved to a large extent around the way that the Bridgestone front tyres perform on the Mercedes, which is not compatible with his style of driving, so some insight into the characteristics of next year’s tyres would be of great benefit to him.

“It’s a question of whether the tyres we have in Abu Dhabi will be the same ones we start the season with and continue the season with, ” said Schumacher. “Yes you’ll get a quick read because you know what the car has been with the Bridgestone tyres and then you’ll know what it is with the Pirelli tyres.

I asked him whether he had pumped Heidfeld for information. The Schumacher of old had legendary attention to detail and was always trying to squeeze out any piece of information that would give him a competitive advantage. Surely, given his current difficulties he would have got the information from Heidfeld?
“Not at all, ” he replied. “I haven’t had one word with him about his Pirelli test. I’m pretty sure what he would tell me wouldn’t be very conclusive. First he wouldn’t want to tell me anything and second he did it in a car that is very different, so what’s the point? I’d rather wait until I make my first experience.”

Schumacher has to approach next year as an opportunity. Next year is a level playing field for him relative the other drivers, all of whom will be coming to terms with the characteristics of the Pirellis from scratch. Remember that it took Alonso and Raikkonen the best part of half a season to master the switch from Michelin to Bridgestone in 2007.

Schumacher also took the opportunity to dismiss the rumours, put about by Eddie Jordan on the BBC, that he is planning to quit at the end of the season. Asked if he wished to deny it he said simply, “Indeed. You can’t get rid of me!”

Photo: Russell Batchelor

It could have been quite different. He was quite quick in qualifying and lost time behind Buemi in Q2, otherwise he might have started higher. And in the race, he got a great start and was quickly up to 14th place. Although he was passed in fine style by Vitaly Petrov, he got ahead of Nico Rosberg and would have finished 6th, only Rosberg repassed him shortly before the end.

The winner who was the first to correctly predict that Schumacher would start 21st and finish 7th was Martin Vincent. He’s been informed and we will send a personalised copy of my biography of Schumacher “The Edge of Greatness” to him.

Thanks again for playing, We’ll do it again soon.

There’s a full size version at the bottom of this post which really does it justice.

Photo: www.xpb.cc

We’ve had hundreds of comments about this incident, with some calling for Schumacher to be banned and others arguing that Barrichello should stop bleating.

I’ve picked out one recent comment from Andrew C, which I thought was very interesting and well written to go with the picture for a calm re-consideration of the situation now that a few days have passed. What I like about it is that he isn’t bogged down by a partisan pro Schuey or anti Schuey mentality, he’s approaching it from the point of view of someone who loves F1 because it is the best drivers in the world doing things the rest of us cannot imagine doing.

I’m not saying he’s right or wrong about his conclusions on Michael’s ethics, but I found the approach really refreshing and it reminds us all of why we are so passionate about F1, whether we are insiders of outsiders.

Here it is:

Andrew C writes: “I must have rewinded the tape 15 times to watch the absolutely excellent pass Rubens put on Schumacher. Funny thing was, Martin Brundle stating seconds earlier that Rubens didn’t have the ‘cajones’ to do the work. The best way to look at the move is in real time… and not still photos.

“It is two of the most experienced, and winning drivers ever, giving each other centimetres of space. The move takes place in a time/ space — call it ‘reality’ — that the average bloke simply could not understand, adjust to or follow through on.

“Sure, subsequently, Rubens could call it the most dangerous moment of his driving career but it was also one of his finest. He had his eye firmly planted on the end of the edge of the pit wall and knew precisely how much driving was needed to pass Schumacher.

“Unbelievable. And to think that in that same instant, Schumacher also knew just how much was too little a width to offer. Within centimetres and at 180mph.

“These guys know each other better than you and I could ever do. There may be some competitive angst towards each other but it is balanced against a knowledge of their ‘craft’ that makes them one of the hundred or so people ever to win a F1 GP.

“It is the kind of thing that sets apart an F1 pilot from the rest of us.

“I’m pleased about the penalty. It wasn’t ‘reckless’ driving in the sense that both drivers put their cars into spots which only left the likelihood of one coming out in front. Rubens persevered.

“So I answer the survey as ‘tough but fair’.”

Almost 10,000 of you have responded to the JA on F1 poll in the last two days and Andrew C is one of the 21% who said the move was “hard but fair.”

Unfortunately for Michael, 73% went for “outrageous”.

FIA steward and former racer Derek Warwick says that he would have called for Schumacher to be black flagged if the race wasn’t about to finish and said he was ‘disappointed’ by Schumacher’s attitude when interviewed by the stewards after the race.

He added that a 10 place grid drop penalty might not sound much, but at a place like Spa, it will effectively ruin his race. So although he’s there and the fans can see him, he won’t take anything from the weekend so it has a similar effect to taking him out for a race.

That’s fine, but as we know at Spa with rain and safety cars, anything can happen…

We are moving on from this story now, but before we do, we have a JA on F1 competition.

Predict where Schumacher will start the Belgian Grand Prix on the grid and where he will finish it. Remember that he will go back ten places from where he qualifies. So if he qualifies 10th, he will start 20th.

The first entry that gets it right, or the nearest, will win a copy of my 2008 biography of Schumacher, “The Edge of Greatness”.

Usual rules apply, you can only enter once and if we have more than one correct answer we will go back through the comments log to find the first one submitted chronologically.

Good Luck!