Is this how Schumacher makes his exit?

News from Italy today suggests that a restructuring within the Mercedes Formula One team could result in team boss Ross Brawn having a diminished role in 2011.

There have been reports in recent weeks that Brawn and Mercedes’ Norbert Haug have not been seeing eye-to-eye and that Brawn might be seriously thinking about retirement — again — as a result.

Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher returned to racing with the team this year and his performance has not been of world-championship calibre. He has a three-year contract and has maintained that he intends to fulfill it, even though for  most of the year he has been upstaged by his younger teammate, Nico Rosberg, leading some observers to suggest that Schumacher’s sub-par performance might have more to do with him than with the car.

If Brawn steps aside as team principal, would Schumacher stop race-driving and take over that job?

He would very quickly become “the face” of Mercedes’ F1 team, which means he would still be front-and-centre in the motorsport world. If part of the deal was a testing role, it would be even better because he could continue to drive up-to-date Formula One cars.

It would be the perfect way to make a graceful exit from race-driving and to safeguard his reputation as one of the sport's all-time greats, which has been taking a bit of a beating this season.

It’s just a suggestion, but one that I believe has merit.

Comments

[allenparkpete]

Let's hope Schumacher exhibits more grace (and brain power) than say Brett Favre which I think he certainly does have and accepts the Ross Brawn role. No guarantees though that he does any better a job than say Emerson Fittipaldi or Alain Prost. Being a team principal in F1 looks to be cut throat and it involves managing quite a few people as well. Driving is easier.

But Schuey and Haug would get a thumbs up from me if they can snag a former Mercedes driver named Mark Webber who would do very well on that team. They could even (occasionally) give Marky a Helmut Marko type group hug when the odd disaster strikes Mark during a race.

[DJL]

Rubbish. Nothing is going to change at MB GP.

Ross Brawn, along with Nick Fry (team CEO), owns just under 25 percent of the team. It's seriously unlikely that MB will be willing to cough up the £12m (at a minimum) to buy him out (which is probably contractually required in order to fire him). So the only way he'll retire is if it's his choice; and he's made it pretty clear he intends to be around next year.

And even if it is his choice to go, it's unlikely that Schumacher would replace him. I don't doubt that Schumacher is a smart guy, but he doesn't have the experience to be an F1 team principal. Yes, he helped Ferrari with some development after he retired. But he's never run a team, or run one of the major departments in a team. In fact he has no real management experience at all (being Todt's 'super assistant' really doesn't count). Pretty much all the team principals in F1 have a significant amount of technical management experience in F1 or team management experience at other levels. I don't know who the official Technical Director is for MB GP, but I suspect that Ross has been basically wearing two hats all year. Which likely means they don't have somebody on the engineering side who'd be strong enough to backstop Schumacher (the way Gascoyne does at Lotus).

The fact of the matter is that the current MB GP car is pretty awful.
Last year Brawn GP put all their time and money into developing last
year's car in order to win the championship. They didn't start
development on the 2010 car until the 2009 season was over; which
simply isn't enough time to build a winning car. And while it's true
that Schumacher hasn't been able to get as much out of the car as
Rosburg, that's really not all that surprising given that he was
retired for 3 years and wasn't in good enough shape in 2009 to sub for
Massa. Frankly I expected him to be a lot worse.

The press have been generating all sorts of wild scenarios about Schumacher's demise since the first lap of the 2010 season. This is just another wild scenario based on nothing but an off-hand comment by Brawn about what he'd like to do after he steps down as Principal.

[jon keely]

Let's hope Schumacher exhibits more grace (and brain power) than say Brett Favre which I think he certainly does have and accepts the Ross Brawn role. No guarantees though that he does any better a job than Emerson Fittipaldi or Alain Prost. Being a team principal in F1 looks to be cut throat and it involves managing quite a few people as well. Driving is easier.