Michael Schumacher, historic Formula 1 driver, suffered an accident in December 2013 while skiing in the French Alps, and, with just three months left until 10 years have passed since that unfortunate event, his state of health remains a mystery. His inner circle, made up of his wife Corinna and his children Mick and Gina María, are in charge of keeping this mystery under lock and key.
The family of the legend of the highest category of motorsports was always responsible for generating secrecy around the German to protect all types of information about his state of health.
But most of the media seek to obtain some type of data that helps them have some degree of knowledge about the situation in which the seven-time Formula 1 champion finds himself.
Although Corinna, Mick and Gina seek to keep a low profile with everything linked to the former pilot’s health, they are not the only ones who have access. Because Jean Todd, former president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), and Roger Benoit, journalist and close friend of Michael, are authorized by the family and are one of the few people who can visit Michael.
And Benoit was precisely the last to provide details about Schumacher: “There is only one answer to that question and it is the one his son gave: ‘I would give anything to talk to dad.’”
The reporter then added: “This sentence says everything about how your father has been doing for more than 3,500 days.”
What did Benoit mean by this? As revealed by Mick in the Netflix documentary that the Kaiser family headed in 2021: “Dad and I understand each other in a different way now, simply because we speak a similar language, the language of motorsport. We have a lot more to talk about and at least that’s where my head is most of the time. That’s when I think, I would give up everything just to have that.”
“We both used to be stubborn. I didn’t like some things and that’s what I wrote. I also took a critical look at his return to Mercedes in 2010. The results proved me right, he only got on the podium once every three years and was then replaced by Lewis Hamilton. It was a sad and tragic end for such a superstar,” he recalls.
And he adds: “After the races, Formula 1 restaurateur Karl-Heinz Zimmermann, Schumacher and I would sit in Bernie’s motorhome, smoke a cigar and drink a beer.”
“We played regularly with each other, in the garden or in the motorhome. Mainly for fun, but later it was about 10 German marks. Let’s put it this way: as a backgammon player I wasn’t as good as a racing driver,” he says.
