Ralph Schumacher's Career Ends
Sabbatical may prove to be the end of former Toyota driver's career.
Ralph Schumacher, brother of seven-time world champion Michael, has decided to take a sabbatical from the sport of Formula One following advice from his big brother – but this could prove to be the end of his Formula One career, according to his former boss Eddie Jordan.
The last driver to successfully take a sabbatical and come back strong was Alain Prost. The four-time world champion took a year out in 1992, the year that Nigel Mansell and the Williams FW14B dominated both championships, and returned in 1993 to take his fourth title, replacing America-bound Mansell for the Williams team.
More recently, Fernando Alonso dallied with the idea of taking a sabbatical after his tumultuous year with McLaren, but decided against it and chose in favour of returning to Renault, aware of the driver competition already floating around in the lower echelons of the sport.
But Schumacher Jr, after considering the only option open to him at Team Force India, decided to go with the guidance of his older sibling and take a year out, hoping that a more competitive seat will be available to him in 2009.
Ralph’s problem here, according to Eddie Jordan, is that there is a lot of young blood coming on to the Formula One driver market, many with the skills, determination and grooming of drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Nelson Piquet Jr, and this might scupper Ralph’s chances of taking a seat in a year’s time.
Whilst the younger Schumacher brother undoubtedly enjoyed some mediocre success at teams such as Jordan and Williams in the late nineties and the early part of this decade, his reputation and the results have failed to match the salary paid to him by Toyota for the past three seasons. The separation of Schumacher and Toyota was, apparently, a mutual one as both parties were disappointed with the results achieved thus far and Toyota have now turned to another young gun, Timo Glock, to partner Jarno Trulli for ’08. Glock, the reigning GP2 champion, is just one example of the younger drivers available to F1 teams who herald the dawn of new talent.
Ralph, at 32, is rapidly becoming an old man in Formula One and, without the results of his brother – or, indeed, many of his front line competitors on the grid – his chances of returning to front line motorsport in 2009 look remote.
Force India is the latest incarnation of the team Eddie Jordan started in 1991 and its former owner is close friends with new owner Vijay Mallya. With Mallya wanting to take Force India back to the heyday that Jordan enjoyed, Eddie believes that Ralph might have missed up on an opportunity to shine as the star he likes to think he is.
“Vijay won’t be shy about putting money into this,” he said. “Whatever the drivers cost, they can be paid for.”
One has to hope that Ralph gave this comment serious consideration before deciding to take his sabbatical.
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