Not many people can say they grew up with a seven-time F1 world champion as a neighbor, but Haas reserve Jack Doohan can. Michael Schumacher was not only a close friend of Doohan’s father Mick, a five-time world champion on two wheels, but he also gifted young Jack his first kart, a moment that helped kick-start his own journey into motorsport.
In our latest edition of F1 iconsDoohan explains why Schumacher is his sporting idol and how that admiration comes from much more than performances and titles…
my father and Michael Schumacher They were very close friends. After 1994, they both won their first world championship and were somehow neighbors: one won on two wheels and the other on four wheels. The relationship started there and all my early years intersected with Michael.
I was spending time at home, so on four wheels, Michael has never been out of the equation to be my idol. He also gave me my first kart (for me and my sister) and that was really the beginning of getting to where I am now.
Even if we don’t talk more about what he has done in the sport or the success of his F1 story, I am incredibly grateful to have such a close relationship with him.
His magnitude as an athlete definitely did not stand out from the beginning. I was a three, five, or seven-year-old kid coming home from school and he was alone with my dad, whatever that was. When these people are around you, they are just another good human being like all of us are. That is the foundation that is sometimes lost in the F1 paddock.
At the end of the day, drivers are normal people. I always say that, apart from being an interpreter, are we essentially right? Athlete performers, no different from the circus!
You’re just another Joe Blow. You have the same routine, you wake up, have your coffee, do your things, go to work and come home.
I always wanted to be true to those values of not being different from others, no matter what stage of life you are in. With Michael, I was rooted in that and I really wanted to carry those values in me.
On the court he behaved with confidence. He obviously had good people around him, but he had just the right amount of aggressiveness. His calculated forgiveness was very assertive and the way he positioned the car on the track, what he would do with it on the track, was extremely strong.
He was always there, you know? Even when things weren’t flowing, whether it was problems or gearbox failures, and he was very, very passionate on and off the track, from what I heard from my father.
So the values are very similar. Especially when you correlate that with other drivers my dad knew at that time compared to Michael, and hearing how much he worked off the track, it becomes clear why he was as successful as he was.
The highlight was being in good physical and mental shape. Both he and my father, instead of working two hours and saying, “I did my homework,” were constantly going queue to queue and pushing each other. They weren’t just doing what was necessary and then moving on.
It’s hard to put his legacy into words, right? And it will vary from person to person.
It really comes down to statistics. You can be the most successful Formula 1 driver of all time because in the 1960s, you could have entered a race and won. In a spreadsheet, they may have a 100% success rate, but are you better than Lewis HamiltonMichael Schumacher or Sebastian Vettel?
That’s an argument that has to be made because there will be different perspectives on the statistics. Discussing what will be right or wrong really varies from person to person.
For me, regardless of having won seven World Championships in two different decades (with different machinery and different types of vehicles), it is incredibly inspiring to stay so strong for so long. And then come together again at a different time with a new newborn team.
There are multiple aspects to praise him, but for me there is much beyond his performances inside the car that make Michael Schumacher my F1 idol.