{"id":79549,"date":"2025-08-19T09:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79549\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:19:10","slug":"inside-schumachers-unusual-pre-f1-comeback-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/79549\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Schumacher’s unusual pre-F1 comeback test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Coorey was a young engineer still making his way in racing with the Super Nova team just a few years after coming over from his native Australia. He\u2019d worked with some good drivers \u2013 Mike Conway, Tiago Monteiro, Adam Carroll, and Jose-Maria Lopez to name but a few.<\/p>\n

In December 2009 he was at Super Nova\u2019s East Anglian headquarters preparing for the new\u00a0GP2\u00a0season where he would be engineering Czech driver Josef Kral, when the phone rang. It was Ron Meadows, the team manager at the then new-look Mercedes F1 team. He had an intriguing request.<\/p>\n

Meadows explained that one of its new drivers needed to get some time in a\u00a0GP2\u00a0car to help with race fitness after some time away from racing. That driver was Michael\u00a0Schumacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do remember being sat in the office with our team manager and getting that call,\u201d Coorey tells The Race.<\/p>\n

\u201cUs testing\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0came up because we were the junior team to Brawn, which of course then became Mercedes, and we had a bit of an association with the Brackley team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I heard it was going to happen, I was like \u2018oh, wow, that sounds awesome\u2019. It sounded like a brilliant thing to do. But weirdly, no one wanted to actually engineer him, so I put my hand up straight away, like a little reflex going off.<\/p>\n

As soon as Coorey did that, the reality and the daunting nature of what he was going to do really started to kick in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was some apprehension because this was one of the greatest drivers ever to set foot in a car,\u201d says Coorey (below), now the team manager of the Jaguar TCS Racing Formula E team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cBut how many opportunities like this do you get in a career? I had to do it, but if I said it wasn\u2019t daunting, I wouldn\u2019t be telling the truth.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

GP2 (now Formula 2),\u00a0through series co-ordinator Bruno Michel and tech lead Didier Perrin, was heavily involved from an early stage, essentially to keep control of the test because they quickly realised that \u201cother teams wouldn’t like this happening\u201d according to Coorey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was a significant understatement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The controversy\"\"<\/p>\n

All competitors in\u00a0GP2\u00a0at the time were supposed to have exactly the same amount of testing with the same number of tyres. Equity and parity were watchwords in\u00a0GP2. <\/p>\n

But this was clearly outside the remit of a normal test, yet it still brought sizeable contention among other teams who were clearly concerned that Super Nova would also use it to advance their own competitive edge for 2010, in which would run Luca Filippi and Marcus Ericsson in addition to Kral.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With\u00a0GP2\u00a0not having a \u2018pool\u2019 test car, Super Nova was pinpointed via its link to the newly-defunct Brawn F1 Team. But other teams were far from impressed that Super Nova would be involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Coorey, F2 tech chief Perrin was asked whether he wanted to engineer\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0for equality, but declined. So, it was Coorey who got the job of working directly with the seven-time F1 world champion, whose last Grand Prix was at the 2006 Brazilian Grand Prix, three and a half years before.<\/p>\n

Since then,\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0had continued to work for Ferrari, often attending Grand Prixs and had initially been considered to replace the injured Felipe Massa after his bizarre Hungarian Grand Prix incident in August 2009. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He even tested for Ferrari at Mugello but had significant discomfort in his neck, a legacy of injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash at a Cartegena trackday the previous February.<\/p>\n

But five months on and Schumacher was preparing for a return to F1 with Mercedes, and he needed to test out his body again, as well as getting laps in prior to the first-ever 21st\u00a0century Mercedes F1 car that he would be driving alongside Nico Rosberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the\u00a0GP2\u00a0test had a real race against time frisson to, and for several reasons. The primary one of which was getting a Frankenstein\u00a0GP2\u00a0car up and running in just a matter of days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to prepare our car because\u00a0GP2\u00a0wouldn’t let us run in its normal set-up,\u201d remembers Coorey.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to build their chassis onto our rear end because their (GP2) rear end wasn’t up to spec and wasn’t runnable. So, for equality and all that, they didn’t want us to run our entire car in an extra test that other\u00a0GP2\u00a0teams couldn’t come to. So, there was a lot of work for us to do.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coorey and his colleagues at Super Nova had to build the car and then it had to be liveried up to generic\u00a0GP2\u00a0colours. On top of that, there were a lot of meetings at Mercedes in Brackley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d go over there, and the main person of contact was engineer Andrew Shovlin (top left, above). I remember going over to do the seat fit with \u2018Shov\u2019 and Michael where I met him for the first time. He was wearing his old Ferrari overalls for the seat fit, which was a bit surreal to be honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was great interest obviously but in a sense it was all quite chilled too considering we were up against it time-wise. Ross Brawn took an active interest in the seat fitting, so it was all quite a close circle of people involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael wanted to run in a fast car that he could get some high g-force experience in and see if his neck was okay. That was the gist of it. And for that purpose, we would run with extra downforce for the whole test, almost the whole test, so that the cornering speeds would be up, and we could get it a bit closer to an F1 car performance-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the test, which was to be held at Jerez, neared, Coorey and the Super Nova team honed their composite car in the early new year to ensure they could hit the ground running over the planned three day running.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The three-day test\"\"<\/p>\n

With the Jerez track to themselves, Coorey,\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0and the team were disappointed to find inclement weather initially delaying the running.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Schumacher, whose only prior running in a\u00a0equivalent to GP2 was in 1991 when he finished second in a Japanese F3000 encounter at Sugo, where he ran in a Team Le Mans-entered Ralt RT23, was soon getting up to speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That he had copious amounts of tyres at his disposal was certainly some help.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember being on a phone call with Ron Meadows and he was saying \u2018how many tyres can we get?\u2019 and I said \u2018normally we have two sets a day. He said \u2018no, no, why don\u2019t we have 10 sets a day?\u2019 And I’m thinking \u2018that’s a bit over the top.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Coorey, who was used to a more frugal way of going racing he clearly recalls Mercedes not caring about the cost at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just wanted to get Michael as much running as they possibly could,\u201d says Coorey.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, it turned out to be wet almost the whole time. It was wet day one, day two, and day three morning. It only dried up for the final afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of the fuel capacity of the\u00a0GP2\u00a0car, any Grand Prix race distance had to be done in installments with runs of \u201caround 25 laps\u201d according to Coorey.<\/p>\n

It was here, where\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0tested out his stamina and consistency, that Coorey became very aware that he was working with one of the all-time greats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so professional, you wouldn\u2019t believe,\u201d remembers Coorey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn\u00a0GP2\u00a0we’re used to running drivers that are coming up through the ranks, and they pass through. You don’t get them for a very long time, and you only run a driver for one season and they’re young, they’re learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael was coming from the other direction and one thing that struck me was his sheer depth of knowledge. He knew everything. If I wanted to have a technical conversation about dampers or diff or anything, he just knew it inside and out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was to a level that usually only engineers know. Drivers don’t usually get that much into it, but he knew everything, really technically proficient. I was really impressed because he was so interested in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘He was like a surgeon’\"\"<\/p>\n

That aptitude matched with his innate ability inevitably brought a bit of eventual frustration with the\u00a0GP2\u00a0car beneath him, particularly with the limitations on the differential.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we had a mechanical diff with ramps and clutch pack, and he liked the hydraulic F1 diff that he could programme infinitely, he got frustrated,\u201d says Coorey.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to isolate it for braking and turn-in and that, and we just couldn’t do it. He was just so incredibly technical and very, very sensitive, a machine but a machine that could really give engaging feedback.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve never met a driver who’s as sensitive as he was. It was like he had in-built sensors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There was an incident at the Jerez test that highlighted this part of\u00a0Schumacher\u2019s armoury. That otherworldly natural feeling of a car’s grip and power. The almost paranormal and undefined in-built dexterity that is hard to describe unless witnessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the wet, everything becomes trickier, so the throttle maps has to be perfect,\u201d says Coorey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were talking about the throttle map, and Michael said, \u2018it feels like there’s a little bit of a bump in the low part of the throttle map, a little inconsistency.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I looked at the screen and I couldn\u2019t see anything. It was one of those cases where you turn it on an angle and you look down the line, you could see this tiny little bump in the lower part of the throttle map, it was hardly distinguishable to the human eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just amazed that he’d picked that up. We flattened it out and we fixed it and we worked on it further to make it better. But I could not believe that he could accurately predict that, like a 0.2% difference or something. It was just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another memorable element of\u00a0Schumacher\u2019s ability was how he used the steering. In F1 power steering had long since been a feature, but in\u00a0GP2,\u00a0there was no such luxury.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At peak loads a high force of input was needed and\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0initially felt it was too high and that he was losing all the finesse in steering that was a big part of his style.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to be able to position the wheel perfectly and control it really finely,\u201d remembers Coorey.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just couldn’t do that, so we did some caster changes and that helped a bit. But it said a bit about how he drove the car and the level of accuracy and finesse that he did with his fingertips. He was like a surgeon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fascination with\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0the professional was matched by\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0the man too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember thinking in the lead up to driving, he was quite short and abrupt and not very chatty,\u201d says Coorey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Once he got in the car and drove it, he was all of a sudden really chatty and smiling and relaxed and comfortable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember at lunchtime on the first day when he got out, he was just at ease and happy to be back in the race car. It was like an extension of him, not so much physically, although that was partly true, but more the emotional and mental side.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was everything you\u2019ve ever heard about him and probably a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Coorey was a young engineer still making his way in racing with the Super Nova team just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-79549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79549","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=79549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}