{"id":77713,"date":"2025-08-18T15:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T15:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/77713\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T15:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T15:34:08","slug":"he-is-the-f1-driver-who-once-replaced-michael-schumacher-at-ferrari-but-never-won-a-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/77713\/","title":{"rendered":"He is the F1 driver who once replaced Michael Schumacher at Ferrari but never won a race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Michael Schumacher suffered a broken leg after an unfortunate brake failure at the 1999 British Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

At the time, it looked as though he had a good chance of winning an incredible first drivers\u2019 championship<\/a> with Ferrari<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, after his opening lap shunt at the British Grand Prix<\/a>, he would go on to miss the following six races. His Formula 1<\/a> season was effectively over.<\/p>\n

Teammate Eddie Irvine<\/a> went on to miss out on the title by just two points, suggesting that the German would have been right in the fight for top honours.<\/p>\n

Only one Ferrari driver beat Schumacher<\/a>, and it was the Irishman who lined up alongside him for four seasons before their dominance began.<\/p>\n

Schumacher nearly denied Irvine the title<\/a> at the season finale, which was his second race after returning from a broken leg. He finished second in both events after his comeback, but his replacement had done a good job, too.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: How Michael Schumacher won the fastest race in the history of Formula 1 at Ferrari\u2019s home track<\/a><\/p>\n

\"FerrariPhoto by Andreas Rentz\/Bongarts\/Getty ImagesMika Salo once replaced Michael Schumacher at Ferrari but never won an F1 race<\/p>\n

The man drafted in as Schumacher\u2019s replacement for six races during the 1999 season was a 33-year-old with some solid experience.<\/p>\n

Mika Salo stepped up and showed strong pace almost immediately. A ninth in his first outing in Austria saw him come close to scoring points, but his second race made a far greater impact.<\/p>\n

After fellow countryman Mika Hakkinen retired from the German Grand Prix, Salo found himself out front with a commanding lead. Unfortunately, team orders dictated that he move over for Irvine.<\/p>\n

On the podium, he was handed the first-place trophy by his teammate as a showing of gratitude for his kind gesture. He would return to the rostrum three races later at Monza with a third place in front of Ferrari\u2019s adoring Tifosi.<\/p>\n

They would be the only two points finishes of his time with the team, but they ended up being critical to ending a 16-year title drought. The 10 points he contributed helped them to pip McLaren to the constructors\u2019 title by four points.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the German Grand Prix with the F1 website<\/a> in 2018, he revealed how it wasn\u2019t too \u2018frustrating\u2019 to let go of such an opportunity, even though he knew that it might never arise again.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say it must have been frustrating for me, but I didn\u2019t think of it that way at that time,\u201d he said. \u201cI just thought that\u2019s my job, so it\u2019s okay. That\u2019s how it was. It\u2019s a team sport. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I sacrificed some other races also for Eddie and the team, like Spa. I could have been also on the podium there easily, but I had to do a little bit of a lift off there. So I took some bullets there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Lewis Hamilton warned he could now suffer the same \u2018reputation\u2019 issue as Michael Schumacher with Ferrari spell<\/a><\/p>\n

What happened to Mika Salo after his 1999 Ferrari spell?<\/p>\n

Salo would once more find a full-time drive for 2000, joining Sauber and finishing 11th in the standings with a best finish of fifth.<\/p>\n

He left them to join Toyota\u2019s new efforts for 2002, skipping the 2001 season. He scored points on debut for them in Australia, but it was all downhill from there.<\/p>\n

At the end of the campaign, he officially announced his retirement from Formula 1 before going on to focus on endurance racing.<\/p>\n

He came first in his class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice in 2008 and 2009, but his racing career faded away soon after.<\/p>\n

From 2011 onwards, he competed in no more than 10 racing events annually, stopping entirely in 2016. In 2020, he completed a one-off race in the Super Taikyu category, but hasn\u2019t raced competitively since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Schumacher suffered a broken leg after an unfortunate brake failure at the 1999 British Grand Prix. At…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,826,844,59477,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-77713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ferrari","11":"tag-michael-schumacher","12":"tag-mika-salo","13":"tag-motor","14":"tag-motor-sports","15":"tag-motosport","16":"tag-motosports","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}