It’s not uncommon for former competitors to speak more candidly about past controversies years after the trophies have been handed out.
But former Ferrari team principal Jean Todt made a particularly stunning U-turn in a recent interview which touched on two of Michael Schumacher’s most notorious incidents.
When the Monaco stewards sent Schumacher to the back of the grid for parking his car at Rascasse in an attempt to stop anyone beating his pole position time 20 years ago, Todt’s defence of his driver was predictably full-throated.
“We totally disagree with it,” he said. He insisted Schumacher made an honest mistake when he came to a stop near the end of the lap, preventing title rival Fernando Alonso from completing his final flying run unimpeded.
“Such a decision creates a very serious precedent, ruling out the possibility of driver error,” said Todt at the time. “Michael was on his final timed lap and was trying to put his first place beyond doubt, as could be seen from the fact that his first split time was the best. With no real evidence, the stewards have assumed he is guilty.”
The stewards in fact described Schumacher’s unusual approach to the corner quite clearly. Few outside the Ferrari camp came to his defence. Now, almost 20 years later, Todt has admitted Schumacher stopped his car on purpose.
Todt, who ran the Scuderia from 1993 to 2008, also conceded Schumacher deserved his punishment following the 1997 championship decider. Schumacher swerved his Ferrari into the side of Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams when his championship rival tried to pass him for the lead of the race.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
In Todt’s revised assessment of both incidents, Schumacher committed two deliberate fouls. Moreover, Todt believes the incidents cost Schumacher a pair of titles on top of the seven he won during his career.
“He crashed [into] him purposely, but he did it badly,” said Todt of the 1997 collision in an interview for High Performance. “In fact, Michael, [an] amazing guy, every time he lost control, he paid [for] it very expensively.
“So it cost him the championship. As, incidentally, in 2006, Monte-Carlo qualifying with Alonso where he purposely spun. He had to [start from] the back of the grid, it cost him the championship as well. So the two mistakes he did cost him the championship.”
Todt was Schumacher’s team principal for 11 years. He believes Schumacher’s collision with Villeneuve was not premeditated, but the result of a rash impulse when he realised the title was slipping away from him.
“It was just an emotion,” said Todt. “That’s why you must be, when you judge somebody in action, you must be very indulgent. It’s easy around the table, to say ‘you should do that’, ‘you should that’. But when you are in the action, you must understand that your brain is reacting differently.
“When he saw that he was going to lose the championship, because he had to be in front of Villeneuve, he tried to avoid that and he tried wrongly to do it. And he needed support. It was a bad move, it wasn’t necessary.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Did Schumacher’s foul play cost him the 1997 and 2006 titles?
Todt has more experience than many of the pain of losing a world championship at the final race of the year. It happened to him at Ferrari in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2006. But it’s hard to go along with his view that those two moves cost Schumacher either title.
The claim that Schumacher cost himself the world championship by colliding with Villeneuve is the easiest to dismiss. Schumacher arrived at that final race a single point ahead of Villeneuve with 10 available for a win and six for second place.
When Villeneuve grabbed the inside line for Curva Dry Sac on lap 48, it looked like a championship-winning move. He had slashed Schumacher’s lead over the preceding laps and there is no reason to believe he wouldn’t have been able to go on to win.
If Schumacher had seen Villeneuve’s move coming, blocked the inside line, then continued to defend his lead for another 21 laps, he could have taken the title. But failing to spot Villeneuve’s attack wasn’t Schumacher’s ‘purposeful’ error – turning in on his rival was.
Whether Schumacher cost himself the 2006 title with his ‘Rascassegate’ stunt is a more subjective question. Just how many points did his Monaco misjudgement cost him, in a season when he missed the title by at least 13 points?
Alonso won the race, scoring 10 points, while Schumacher recovered from the back of the grid to finish fifth for four points – a five-point swing. Had Schumacher driven cleanly around Rascasse, Alonso then demoted him to second on the grid and they finished in the positions they started (not an unreasonable assumption for Monaco), Schumacher would only have been four points better off.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
If Schumacher had somehow displaced Alonso from the lead and won ahead of him, he would have gained two points instead of losing five. But at the end of the year he would have still lost the title by six.
Of course, this incident didn’t happen at the final race of the season, it occured at the seventh round of 18. Would Schumacher have approached subsequent races differently had he left Monaco with more points? It’s hard to imagine how or why – he was never more inclined to leave points on the table than any other world champion.
Schumacher was pilloried over his Rascassegate stunt. For some, that incident made it harder to view previous Schumacher controversies such as Jerez 1997 and Adelaide 1994 as misjudgements rather than intentional acts.
It is remarkable to see Todt, one of few who defended him at the time, now expressing a totally contrary view. All the more so given the revelation six years ago by Schumacher’s 2006 team mate, Felipe Massa, that the possibility of interfering with the new qualifying format was jokingly discussed within Ferrari prior to the session.
That said, I would hesitate to chalk up either incident as examples of Schumacher costing himself a title. Both were undoubtedly egregious moves, but that alone doesn’t make the numbers add up. Unlike, for example, last year’s obviously comparable situation.
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
Formula 1
- 25 of the most memorable radio exchanges from the ‘Max and GP show’
- FIA explains next steps after first meeting to discuss fixes for 2026 F1 rules
- Official: Verstappen’s engineer Lambiase to join McLaren in 2028
- The shadow of motorsport’s worst tragedy hangs over F1’s latest safety debate
- Dad didn’t want me to start racing admits new F1 points leader Antonelli