So many roses, but a few thorns too in Schumacher's reign at Spa

If there is one track that is inextricably linked to the name Michael Schumacher then it is Spa-Francorchamps. It was here that he made his Formula 1 debut in 1991, followed a year later by his first win and this was also the stage where he secured his seventh and final world championship crown in 2004. In between, there were a further five race wins to stake his claim as the king of Spa, which still holds good today as no one has matched him on the circuit considered by almost all grand prix drivers and the sport's cognoscenti to be the most beautiful and challenging track of all.

There are other statistics that attest to Michael's special affinity for Spa. He raced here 11 times between 1992 and 2004, missing the 1999 event, having broken his leg earlier in the year at Silverstone, while the Belgian race wasn't held in 2003 for legal and commercial reasons. He finished the race ten times, winning seven of those and finishing second in the other three. He failed to see the chequered flag just once, in the ill-fated 1998 edition, when in a torrential downpour Michael drove into the back of David Coulthard while trying to lap the McLaren driver, when he had a huge lead over second placed Damon Hill in the Jordan, who went on to win. Having limped back to the pits on three wheels, followed home by the Scotsman whose car was missing its rear wing, Michael flew into a rage and despite the best efforts of Ferrari's young sporting director, Stefano Domenicali, he charged down the pit lane to the McLaren garage to remonstrate with Coulthard. Only a wall of McLaren mechanics dressed in black stopped it degenerating into a fight.

This was probably the most painful thorn in Michael's side at the Belgian Grand Prix: the ten points for the win that slipped from his grasp that day would have seen him arrive in Suzuka for the final race of the season with a six point lead over Mikka Hakkinen. Instead, the gap was a four point deficit and who knows, the championship table could have looked quite different. Less bothersome was the thorn in 1994. Michael was leading the race by a country mile, despite spinning through 360 degrees. He carried on as though nothing had happened, and the win would seem to have sealed that year's title, despite being disqualified from the following two races in Monza and the Nurburgring. Then, on Sunday night in Spa, the FIA stewards disqualified Michael's Benetton-Ford, for excessive wear of the skid plate, in all probability exacerbated by that aforementioned spin and a ride over the kerbs. Or at least this was the argument put forward by Benetton's technical director Ross Brawn. But what looked like a well deserved victory thus went to Damon Hill, at the time Williams' number one driver. The importance of this would become clear at the final round of the season in Adelaide, when the German and Hill collided, handing Schumacher the title.

Maybe the most amazing of Schumacher's Spa wins came in 1995. Having failed to set a time in the dry in qualifying as his car hadn't been rebuilt following a crash in the morning, the reigning world champion had to start from the eighth row. He proceeded to charge into the lead by lap 16 and kept it to the end, engaged in another closely contested duel with Hill. This was Schumacher's first race as a Ferrari driver in-waiting, given that the boss of FIAT, Gianni Agnelli had announced the German's move for the following year a few weeks earlier. Even the most sceptical of Prancing Horse tifosi realised that a phenomenal driver was on his way to Maranello. 

As a Ferrari driver, Michael won four times at Spa. The most tricky was definitely the first in 1996, given that the F310 was far from being a winning car. It had been a particularly difficult summer in Maranello, Schumi having picked up just three points from five races and many wondered if he was really as good as everyone had thought in his Benetton days. More still were clamouring for the head of Jean Todt who had led the Scuderia for three years and had only delivered three wins. The rock solid bond between the Frenchman and his driver only became stronger and the win in Spa, followed immediately by one in Monza, was the best response to the fierce criticism which had been aimed at Ferrari.

Two rather different second places also remain etched in the memory. In 2000, Michael was second to Hakkinen, after the Finn pulled off an amazing passing move on the Ferrari and Zonta in the BAR at the end of the Kemmel straight. The move, with four laps remaining is one for the history books.The win gave the Finn a six point lead over the German in the Drivers' standing, raising hopes of a third world title, leaving Ferrari once again fearing seeing another title slip from its grasp, a title it had not won since 1979. Then came four wins in a row, in Monza, Indianapolis , Suzuka and Sepang, to change the course of history, kicking off a five year winning streak, the first of its kind for the Italian team.
In 2004, another Finn, Kimi Raikkonen, stood on the top step of the podium, but that was regarded as a minor detail by the German and everyone at Ferrari, as the eight points he picked up meant Michael took his fifth Drivers' crown with five races remaining, following on from the team clinching the Constructors' title a fortnight earlier in Budapest. It was a triumphant season and it brought the curtain down on this era.