It has nearly been 20 years since Michael Schumacher climbed into a Ferrari cockpit for the last time at a Formula 1 event.
He managed five drivers’ championships during his 11-season spell with the team and helped to forge one of the greatest legacies in Formula 1 history.
Schumacher was a true leader and turned the Ferrari operation into a winning one in a short space of time off the back of years of miserable results.
Some of his competitors including Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton are heralded alongside him as the best of all time.
Schumacher gifted Ferrari engineers to help motivate them for title challenges, and knew how to extract the most from his colleagues.
After years of competing at the top, Luciano Burti admitted Schumacher had a ‘high-performance’ mentality at Ferrari and was focused on delivering the best all the time.
READ MORE: Andrea Stella shares what Michael Schumacher did in 2004 that he would love to copy at McLaren
Marc Gene says Michael Schumacher’s ‘super powerful’ F1 ability was multi-tasking at Ferrari
Nowadays, Marc Gene is a Ferrari ambassador and has worked with five of their world champions. He was their test driver between 2004 and 2010.
Schumacher is one of the drivers he worked with and he has revealed that the German could multi-task like no one else on the grid.
“Engineers told me that Michael had this capacity of changing things and had no negative impact into his driving. No making mistakes. Other drivers were not as good as that, as him on that,” he said.
“That function was super powerful as long as you could drive and still have 5% of your brain left to do these things without affecting negatively your driving.”
Lewis Hamilton received the same Ferrari love as Schumacher following his ‘first’ win for the team during a sprint race.
Both seven-time champions have adoring fanbases and it’s likely that the German would have enjoyed seeing the Brit attempt to bring some success back to the team.
READ MORE: Flavio Briatore says ‘extraordinary’ F1 star is the closest driver he’s seen to Michael Schumacher
How did Marc Gene end up working with Michael Schumacher at Ferrari?
Gene signed a deal to become Ferrari’s test driver after the 2004 season, after spending four seasons with Williams.
His best finish came in the 2003 Italian Grand Prix, deputising for Schumacher’s brother – Ralf, who had sustained a concussion.
He scored fifth place and four of his five career points that day but was dropped the following year in favour of Antonio Pizzonia.
Gene’s duties at Ferrari were shared with Luca Badoer until 2010 when Jules Bianchi replaced them both. He dabbled in the World Endurance Championship, before ceasing all racing in 2014.
He would have been close to Schumacher in 2005 and 2006 before the German retired but may have continued to work closely with him during his years as an advisor before a return with Mercedes in 2010.
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