Ralf Schumacher Fortune

Short introduction

Ralf Schuhmacher was a Formula 1 racing driver until 2007 and then a DTM driver until he ended his active career as a driver in 2013. Today he works as an entrepreneur and Formula 1 expert on television.

Early life

Ralf Schuhmacher was born on June 30, 1975 in Hürth near Cologne and grew up in the neighboring municipality of Kerpen. He is the younger brother of 7-time Formula 1 world champion Michael Schuhmacher and son of Rolf Schuhmacher, who worked at the now famous kart track in Kerpen.

Career

Ralf did his first laps with a kart in Kerpen when he was 3 years old and followed in the footsteps of his older brother Michaels, who already had great success in the junior classes. Ralf wanted to do the same to his big brother and in 1989 he won his first title as German junior karting champion.

In the following three years he made the Gold Cup, the NRW Cup and the Junior Kart Championship. In 1992 he switched to Formula Junior, a racing category for single-seat, open racing cars. The following year he was runner-up in the ADAC Formula Junior and then received a contract for Formula 3, all under the watchful eye of his then manager Willi Weber.

There he achieved his first victory in Formula 3 with his team WTS and achieved third place in the overall classification at the end of the season. The following year he was even able to improve his placement in the final classification and climbed to second place, the runner-up. With this success Ralf Schuhmacher could have switched to the European Formula 3000, but on the advice of Willi Weber he drove in the Japanese Formula Nippon, where he won the championship title against Norberto Fontana in the last race of the 1996 season. With this success, the doors to Formula 1 opened for the young talent. There was nothing standing in the way of a contract with Eddie Jordan’s racing team (Jordan F1) and he made his debut in 1997 in the premier class of motorsport.

Career highlights

Already in his first year in Formula 1, Ralf Schuhmacher showed a strong will and made it to his first podium in the third race of the season in Argentina. In the end, Schuhmacher scored 13 points and Jordan F1 finished fifth in the constructors’ world championship. The following year there was an engine change at Jordan F1. The Peugeot engines were dispensed with and Mugen-Honda drive units were used. Schuhmacher scored 14 points, which was enough for 10th place at the end of the season, and his racing team made fourth place overall.

But there was a crisis in the team and so the switch to Williams F1 then came in 1999. A year later, Williams F1 then became the BMW works team and a career boost came from Ralf Schuhmacher. In Imola he won his first Formula 1 victory in 2001 and in the same season followed by victories in Montreal and Hockenheim. Together with his team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya, Schuhmacher was celebrated as the best driver team in the international press that year.

A year later, he won the Malaysian Grand Prix and finished fourth overall at the end of the season, just as he had the year before. In the 2003 season, Schuhmacher celebrated victories at the European Grand Prix and the French Grand Prix. The following season Ralf then had a serious accident at the Grand Prix in the USA and had to pause for several months. He only drove the last four races of the year.

With the change to the Toyota team in 2005, Ralf Schuhmacher improved financially, but his stage was rather mediocre for the team based in Cologne. The F1 driver, who started with title hopes, only achieved a sixth and tenth place in the overall ranking the following year. His contract was not renewed in 2007.

Ralf Schuhmacher celebrated 6 Formula 1 victories and scored 329 Grand Prix points. From 2008 he drove in the DTM before retiring as an active driver five years later.

Famous quotes

“Even if I now bitterly disappoint some: I am no more gay than the Danube is an island.”
“The whole village gossip gets on my nerves. It’s enough for me, I want to go. ”
“It wears out my humor when asked about my brother. I am Ralf Schumacher and I do not define myself through my relatives. ”
“I am a modern man and change diapers at night.”
“At home little David screams, the engines roar here. Don’t ask what’s louder. . . ”

Success tips

“Three wins so far are pretty nice, but not awesome yet. What matters is not the individual victory, but the world championship title. ”