Michael Schumacher is known for his ruthlessness on a Formula 1 track and this win-at-all-costs mentality continued into other aspects of his career.
Prior to the complete ban on in-season testing, teams at the higher end of the grid would spend millions of pounds on testing programmes to help improve their cars over rivals.
Brazilian driver Luciano Burti was part of the F1 driver testing pool Ferrari had in the early 00s. He joined the team in 2002 after he suffered a bad accident during the 2001 season racing for Prost at the Belgian Grand Prix.
He did this job with Ferrari between the 2002 and 2004 seasons, assisting them by collecting crucial pieces of tyre data. In those days F1 had a tyre war between Michelin and Bridgestone, with Ferrari running the latter. This meant any mileage was important to understanding the limitations of their cars.
Burti recalled the moment when he encountered Schumacher for the first time in 2002 on the Beyond the Grid podcast, the year after he took his first title of five with the Italian outfit.
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Luciano Burti recalls Michael Schumacher story at Ferrari test
Burti had just come back from his life-threatening crash at Spa Franchorchamps, where he made contact with Eddie Irvine’s Jaguar during the race at the highspeed Blanchimont corner.
“When I met Michael in Madonna di Campiglio after this test, he came to me and said ‘Ah, not so good because that was already my fourth or fifth lap – you had 15 kilos less fuel’
“I understand what he meant. He was not saying it in a bad way, but he wasn’t also supporting a young guy who was just coming back from a huge accident and would be nice for him to say ‘Hey man, well done. It’s nice!’ It’s such a high level of performance.”
Michael Schumacher’s mobile building site
The F1 legend often made use of these to his advantage, on one occasion clocking up over 160 laps during a test day with Ferrari.
His Ferrari would be punished to the extreme during these test days, with the mechanics having to make various adjustments throughout the day. This is what earned it the “mobile building site” moniker amongst his team.
During the 1998 season he clocked up 30,000 kilometres of testing mileage around Ferrari’s dedicated Fiorano race track.
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