With Mick Schumacher now closer than ever to emulating his father's footsteps, is his biggest obstacle to a storybook ending Michael's biggest fan?
The intrigue never stops at Ferrari, does it?
A few weeks removed from the Arrivabene-Binotto civil war, just when things had died down, the Scuderia goes and livens things up again with the signing of Mick Schumacher.
As GP247 head honcho Paul Velasco pointed out last week, you couldn't script this if you tried. Mick going from aspiring racer, to surprise F3 champion, to now representing the same outfit his father so famously did is about as cliché a story as you can have, and yet it's happening.
However, the thing I'm really intrigued by how this could potentially affect Sebastian Vettel. I mean, consider Vettel's own relationship with the Schumacher name:
- He grew up idolizing Michael, being seven years old when the German won his first of seven world championships in 1994, and largely credits him for his interest in racing.
- Debuted in F1 the year after Schumi Sr, retired, and quickly assumed the role of "the next great German driver" with his success at Toro Rosso
- Shared the track with him for three years from 2010-2012, where the two formed a close friendship
- Reeled off four straight titles from 2010-13 in a run of dominance unseen since Schumi himself
- Has been one of the few people outside his immediate family to keep in close contact since Michael's December 2013 skiing accident
- Followed in his footsteps by joining Ferrari and restoring them (somewhat) to prominence
For his entire career, Vettel has been linked to Michael in some way, and indeed been christened the "next Schumi" in some circles, and yet all of that has been supplanted with a pen stroke as his son has signed to the Ferrari driver academy.
Now obviously Mick has a long,
long way to go before he's even in a position to compete in F1, but if only because he recently beat Vettel at the 2019 Race of Champions, well… if I were Seb, I wouldn't know quite what to feel about it. On one hand, he's twelve years younger and much can change in Vettel's own career before Mick is ready, but on the other, if he's delivers on the hype, you're the guy standing in the way of him realising his destiny as Ferrari's lead driver.
In that scenario, either he replaces Charles Leclerc/whomever and you compete head-to-head (and we've seen what can happen between Vettel and his teammates), or Seb's the one on the ouster. Can you still share a bond with the Schumacher family when you're honest-to-goodness rivals with his kid?
I'll admit I'm getting a little carried away here, but I just think it's a fascinating scenario to consider. There's a saying made popular by the rapper Drake that in the course of success, "idols become your rivals" – it's unavoidable, a given, but your idol's child becoming your rival? There's no blueprint for how to handle that.
Big question: Is Vettel destined to become the villain in the Mick Schumacher story?
https://www.grandprix247.com/2019/01/19/binotto-welcome-to-ferrari-mick-schumacher/
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