Michael Schumacher ends testing career on a high

By John Bagratuni Oct 13, 2006, 15:10 GMT

Hamburg - The last test drive of his career went well for Michael Schumacher but he made no predictions for his farewell race.

When Schumacher stepped out of his Ferrari car on Thursday on the Spanish track of Jerez he simply hugged the mechanics of his Formula One team and then invited them for dinner.

'It is really sad that he is leaving us. He is an extraordinary driver and a close friend. We will miss him a lot,' said Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer.

The media reactions Friday were similar.

'Schumacher drove better than the biggest optimists at Ferrari would have believed. Fernando Alonso must consider himself lucky that the world championship is all but decided. The alarm bells would be ringing at Ferrari if the championship was still tight,' said Spanish sports daily Marca.

Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport said: 'The super-champion wrapped up his final day of testing in a grand way. A happy Schumi drives 1,000 kilometres without problems. Everything looks fine for the Brazilian Grand Prix.'

Schumacher missed his own lap record from 2004 by a mere 18 hundreds of a second when he clocked 1 minute 15.688 during the two days of testing.

That shows that Schumacher can very well win the final race next week Sunday in Sao Paulo - but his dilemma is that Alonso only needs to finish eighth for one point to secure successive world titles.

Schumacher will only steal the title if he wins and Alonso fails to finish in the points or at all.

But the tests only further underlined that the man who ownes practically every record in the sport will fight until the very end to secure an eighth world title on October 22.

Schumacher has always also been a serious tester in his 16-year career. Germany's Bild daily said Friday that he has driven some 220,000 kilometres during the period which amounts to almost six trips around the planet.

Now comes the final fine-tuning for the Brazil race and Badoer revealed that Schumacher was 'fully calm' just like on Sunday when his title dreams all but ended in an engine blow which forced him to retire in leading position at the Japanese GP.

Schumacher said later that day he doesn't want to win the title by Alonso not finishing in the final race and former champion Niki Lauda told Bild that it was practically unthinkable these days that someone else would try to drive Alonso off the track to help Schumacher.

Schumacher has been accused of some dirty racing tricks earlier in his career. There were in fact some people not fully satisfied with his behaviour in Jerez as well, although in a minor way in connection with the German playing football with locals on Wednesday.

'It was a great joy to play with him. But he left after the game without contributing one euro for the pitch rent,' the Marca sports daily quoted one of the youths as saying.