Never work together with your heroes. Except in case you’re Sam Bird, who from 2010 to 2013 rode shotgun amid Michael Schumacher’s ultimate Formula 1 hurrah.
During his rookie GP2 season in 2010 Bird, who drove for ART Grand Prix, solely received one characteristic race. But he gained many followers alongside the way in which, pulling off some epic restoration drives, notably on the Barcelona spherical when he fought again into the highest 10 after an early entrance wing change.
Among the admirers that day was Mercedes staff supervisor Ron Meadows, who knew Bird somewhat from karting days when his personal son, Michael, was a rival. After the Monza GP2 spherical that September, Meadows referred to as up asking if Bird would have an interest within the season-ending F1 rookie check at Yas Marina.
Bird bit Meadows’s hand off and did a really competent job sharing the observe with then-F1 hopefuls Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo and Jules Bianchi. Also on observe that day had been his future fellow Formula E rivals Antonio Felix da Costa (Force India), Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso, the staff he’d additionally race for in F1), Oliver Turvey (McLaren), in addition to his sporting supervisor whereas at McLaren, Gary Paffett, additionally then driving a McLaren F1 automobile.
That Mercedes likelihood – and the deal to turn out to be check driver that adopted – was essential to Bird, not simply because it gave him a primary actual foot on the F1 ladder. But additionally as a result of it additionally enabled him to develop a relationship with his nice racing hero, Schumacher.
Initially in awe of the seven-time world champion, who was coming again for a second chew at F1 with Mercedes, Bird developed a robust friendship with Schumacher – though their first actual assembly was comically inauspicious.
“I’d kind of met him before playing football in the charity match at Monaco and stuff like that,” Bird tells The Race. “But then all of a sudden I’m there in my new Mercedes kit as a driver at the rookie test in Abu Dhabi, and I’m about to have my first meeting as a team member.
“But earlier than I do, I shortly nip to the bathroom. I method the john and the indicator says inexperienced, so I push the door open and there he’s. It’s Michael, however with elements of Michael I’d not been anticipating to see!
“Anyway, we had this assembly and Ross Brawn says: ‘Look, all people, we have got younger Sam Bird right here and he will be shadowing us this weekend and doing the rookie days for us and be our reserve. Please make him really feel welcome. And, If it’s essential discover him, he’ll be hanging round exterior the bathrooms’.
“Michael had obviously teed that up with Ross, and that kind of started it off, breaking the ice. Michael came over, gave me a hug afterwards, said, ‘Welcome to the team’.”
From that level on, Bird and Schumacher bought alongside extraordinarily effectively and developed a rapport which, Bird says, “meant the world to me, because he was just such a generous person”.
While Schumacher’s well-known interpersonal expertise had been well-known to these within the inside circle, Bird discovered them standing out time after time of their few years working collectively.
“His ability to galvanise and get the team around him, and his ability to mould the team that he wanted around him, was sensational,” says Bird.
“I obviously saw him working when he was towards the end of his career, he was early-40s then, plus he didn’t really have the car. But there were glimpses of raw speed, like the lap he did in 2012 in Monaco [that would’ve earned Schumacher pole had a penalty not been carried over], which was stunning.
“Nico [Rosberg] was very articulate and nice with engaged on the automobile with the numbers and extracting extra performance-wise, most likely out of the software program side, however Michael’s interpersonal expertise had been simply unbelievable and he extracted lots from that side of his armoury.”
This aptitude of Schumacher’s often manifested in going into everything to do with the team and the car in forensic detail. One day in 2012, Schumacher’s final F1 season, completely encapsulated it.
“There was a rookie check in [September] 2012 and I used to be doing it,” recalls Bird.
“Really early within the morning, Michael referred to as me up and he stated, ‘I’m coming to Magny Cours later this morning, I’ll simply drop the youngsters off in school first’.
“He was super interested in the Coanda-effect exhaust that we were going to be testing there for the first time before Singapore and he just didn’t want to hear about it: he wanted to see it in action.
“His jet lands at 9.30am simply earlier than I head out of the pits, and Michael heads straight for the observe, together with my dad – which was surreal – to check the way in which the exhaust was making the automobile deal with. He stayed for just a few hours after which was off to select the youngsters again up from college.”
Bird also got to study and appreciate Schumacher’s actual driving style in the years he worked with Mercedes, enabling him to sketch out this fascinating illustration of Schumacher’s practical style in the latter stages of his career.
“Michael was very delicate with the brake pedal, after which he would need the automobile and the brake to rotate effectively, to then get again on the ability, which I feel is why he was so good within the traction management space,” reckons Bird.
“He might get it turned in so early, after which get again on energy fairly shortly and fairly effectively, after which use the techniques to drive and blast out of corners.
“He had a very good feel, sensitive in his reflexes. When I looked at Lewis’s [Hamilton] data, it was just so clean that the brake shapes were always mega and perfect. Michaels weren’t the same. There would be dips and troughs in the brake shapes, it was like he was feeding the rear of the car, moving around and very aware and sensitive to that.”
For the younger Bird, watching Schumacher at shut quarters fed him with a number of expertise for his future profession, one that took him to the cusp of the GP2 title in 2013 after which a robust presence Formula E and World Endurance Championship – which included 12 E-Prix wins and the LMP2 title in 2015.
“What I took from Michael was just building relationships with people within the team,” says Bird.
“That was the main thing for me. And I suppose, as well, not being afraid to ask questions. If Michael wasn’t sure of something, he would ask the engineers: ‘What can I do to improve? Where can I change things at this corner or that braking point?’
“There was by no means any, ‘I’m a seven-time world champion, I do know all the pieces’. He was all the time seeking to higher himself and hone his expertise.”
That attitude helped mould Bird into a successful professional racing driver, something he remains to this day – now with Nissan as its Formula E reserve, 15 years later. It is a time and experience that Bird will never take for granted.
“I by no means put him on a pedestal to his face, although he’s on a pedestal for me internally, however I by no means made that clear to him,” Bird says of Schumacher.
“When you had been in his circle, my God, what a beautiful human being he was.
“I am super fortunate and lucky that I’ve worked with him, and that it wasn’t a disappointment; far from it. I think some people meet their heroes and they’re let down by it, or it doesn’t go very well. I worked with my hero, and he was just the best.”
