Michael Schumacher’s greatest quality at Mercedes revealed by former reserve driver

Formula E veteran Sam Bird has offered a glimpse into his time working with Michael Schumacher at Mercedes.

Serving as a Formula 1 reserve driver at the Brackley outfit in 2010, Bird had a front-row seat to the comeback of the seven-time champion. Bird believed that the German driver's greatest strength was how he worked with people. 

"Michael, firstly, what a guy," Bird told Lucas Stewart. "What I learned from Michael, it wasn't necessarily how he drove; it was how he worked with people. His ability to get the team around him, work with people, be nice, be firm when you needed to be firm.

"I think that's probably the biggest thing that I took away from working with him. He was really, really good at getting a good team environment. And that's probably the biggest take from that experience."

Schumacher returned to F1 in 2010 after what ended up being his first retirement at the end of 2006. Schumacher remained with Mercedes until the end of 2012 before Lewis Hamilton joined the team. The German has been credited with escalating the outfit to championship-winning form.

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes GP, Senior Race Engineer to Michael Schumacher with Michael Schumacher, Mercedes GP

Photo by: XPB Images

"Nico [Rosberg] was his team-mate, and Nico was really good at car set-up and knowing numbers and figures about the car where he wanted the car. Michael was good at that but also brilliant at the person-to-person stuff," Bird continued.

"And I think you saw that from Ferrari, how they loved him, and he brought that over to Mercedes. So it's the respect that he quite rightly had when he was in the team.

"It was that presence. It was that aura of him walking in the room, and everyone knew when Michael said something, OK, there's weight behind this."