This week Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has reiterated his desire to see Schumacher race a Ferrari again, should all the new teams, so derided by Ferrari, fail to make it onto the grid and teams be required to field third cars.

“There’s lots of talk about me returning to Formula One, ” says Schumacher. “I was very close obviously this year to replacing Felipe, but whether I’m going to race in the future or not, we will see.

“Driving the 2007 car really felt like driving it – it didn’t take me very long to drive the car on the edge, which was something I enjoyed after being out for so long. It didn’t take me long to feel good and come back.

“I felt I was possibly ready, but obviously there was the neck issue and it emerged that I wasn’t. I regret obviously falling in February (off a motorbike), but sometimes life writes the story and you have to deal with your destiny.

“I still love motorbikes; I haven’t raced one since, but we’ll see what happens in the future. I guess my neck by the end of the year or beginning of next year will be fully fine, but I will be 41 – and that would make me the grandad of F1! I’m not sure I want that.”

The seven times world champion has renewed his agreement as a consultatant at Ferrari and, having declared that he considers Massa to be “like a brother” it will be very interesting to see how he conducts himself around the garage next year with Fernando Alonso challenging Massa for top dog status in the team. Kimi Raikkonen paid no attention to Schumacher’s advice, Alonso is likely to play things differently.

Meanwhile Schumacher has again reiterated that the greatest regret of his career is the deliberate collision with Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez 1997, which cost him the world championship and his reputation,

“I have some moments that if I could have them again, yes I would do them differently – probably 1997 in Jerez, ” he said. “I would have had a couple of opportunities to avoid all this and still win the championship, but you take your lessons and you learn from them.”

I remember that race as it it were yesterday, although that may have something to do with having written two books on Schumacher, one of which was specifically to do with this race and its aftermath.

Schumacher panicked when Villeneuve made his lunge down the inside of him at Dry Sack corner, shortly after both had made their final pit stops of the race. Villeneuve knew he had to take advantage of the fresh Goodyear tyres to attack Schumacher and he went for it. Schumacher tried to drive him off the road and instead put himself out of the race.

Schumacher has said before, in the second book I wrote about him, that this is the one thing he would do differently. Although he stonewalled it immediately after the race, di Montezemolo made him realise that he had done something really bad, “If there is one thing I could do over again in F1 it would be that race in Jerez, ” he said.

Speaking of books, I’m very excited because my new book looking back on the 2009 season is being printed as we speak. It will be available on November 27th but you can pre-order it by clicking on the tab on the right of the home page.

I quickly get used to it again. The energy is always astonishing. You can feel the drivers who are on it, Massa is very aggressive straight away, Raikkonen looks committed.

The Red Bull mechanics were under pressure. Vettel stopped out on the track early on and they were unscrewing the floor of Webber’s car as I left the pit lane.

But what really caught my eye was three commanding presences in the pit garages.

At McLaren, Ron Dennis dressed in black, standing on his own in the middle of the garage. The mechanics move around him, respectfully, leaving a wide space around him. He looks very serious, has his aggressive face on. No longer the team principal maybe, no longer central to activities on the pit wall, but still a huge presence in the garage.

Next door at Ferrari an equally serious looking Michael Schumacher. An adversary of Dennis for many years, now a fringe player in a way, as a consultant to Ferrari, but they’ve built his part up a bit this weekend. With the switch to slick tyres and other new rules his eye and judgement are valued. He’s taking the role seriously, moving across the garage to inspect Raikkonen’s rear tyres when the car comes in from a run. He studies, them, runs his finger across the ruts and blisters. A young Bridgestone engineer, prodding his temperature guage into the tyre finds a stony faced seven time world champion grilling him about the tyre. Schumacher, like Dennis, is a competitor. No longer directly competing, maybe, but still engaged, committed.

Down the other end of the pit lane is the Brawn garage. The decoration is sparse, no frills, the cars sponsorless for the moment. If you didn’t know better you’d think you were looking at the Minardi of today. But these guys are the team to beat this season. And the reason is Ross Brawn, Schumacher’s old ally from Ferrari. His name is above the door, he’s more engaged than he’s ever been and he’s been smarter than everyone else in preparing for this year. Or is that craftier? Actually it’s both. Brawn cuts a massive figure on the pit wall, a radio on each hip, his face impassive.

Some work on the footwell of Button’s car is taking longer than expected, Brawn comes off the pit wall to inspect the work. The mechanics are aware of his presence, but not intimidated by it. Unlike his old colleague Schumacher and his rival Dennis, Brawn is competing directly, he’s at the heart of what is happening.

Three huge characters, authors of much of the sport’s recent history, competing in their different ways on day one of a new Formula 1 season

Schumacher, who turned 40 last month, has been a consultant to Ferrari ever since his retirement as a driver in 2006. He has driven as a super-tester on several occasions since then, but with restrictions on testing so severe now, he has decided that the work should be left to the race drivers.

Schuey, who has yet to define his role with the team for 2009, told the Koln Express, the local paper of Cologne, near his home town “The winter tests are very important. Especially given the ban during the season. It’s a preparation for the whole season. As I see it, it’s up to the race drivers to do the work, not testers. I’m speaking to Ferrari at the moment to see whether they see it the same way.”

It’s amazing to think just how different this situation is from when Michael was driving. In the late 1990s and early 2000s he spent over 200 days away from home in a year, with promotional activities, races and tests. The testing element of it was huge, often up to 20 days before the start of the season, and then two or three days in every week following a Grand Prix.

Ferrari committed a lot to testing because they had a special budget from Bridgestone, rumoured to be around £20 million per season, to carry out tyre development tests. Of course they would test all manner of new things on the car at the same time. It was quite a big advantage to have budget, two test tracks (Fiorano and Mugello) and unlimited test days.

It’s one of the reasons McLaren invested so heavily in simulation technology in the early 2000s, because they did not have the same luxury with testing as Ferrari. Now that investment is paying off massively as they are miles ahead and it’s Ferrari who are playing catch up in that area.