In news that's certain to send thrills through worldwide auto racing fans, F1 champion and planet-level athletic hero Michael Schumacher will be returning to the track to drive for Mercedes next year, according to a report in the German daily newspaper Bild. Now, in the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal, we're a bit gunshy about accepting news at face value, but this seems fairly solid: Schumacher and Mercedes have reportedly agreed to a one-year contract and will announce the deal sometime next week.
Schumacher's people declined comment, while Mercedes gave only a cryptic "there is always speculation as long as one seat in our team is not taken."
Earlier this summer, Schumacher considered a comeback with Ferrari, but killed that idea because of lingering injuries from a motorcycle wreck. At that time, we gave a little perspective about Schumacher's impact on the world of motorsports, and since nothing's really changed since then, we'll reprint it here. Roll the clip:
If pre-scandal Tiger Woods and Serena Williams had a baby, and Michael Jordan and Megan Fox had a baby, and those two babies met and had another baby, that baby would be Michael Schumacher. The 40-year-old German is a seven-time Formula One champion and a worldwide celebrity, controversial and charitable all at once.
Schumacher won 91 of the 250 races in his F1 career. He captured championships in 1994 and 1995, and then again every season from 2000 to 2004. He hit the billion-dollar mark in earnings -- that's billion with a "b" -- in 2005, beating Tiger Woods by an estimated five years. And he was every bit as controversial in F1 circles as Charles Barkley multiplied by Terrell Owens; two separate times, he was involved in late-season incidents that determined a season's champion. In one, he was exonerated; in the other, he was disqualified and lost the 1997 championship as a result.
He retired from F1 in 2006 but continues to race in occasional series like last December's Race of Champions, a cross-series all-star race that included Carl Edwards. (In a head-to-head matchup, Edwards beat Schumacher.) Oh, and he also stays charitable, having given an estimated $50 million to charities over the course of his life.
Yeah, he's kind of a big deal.
Schumacher returns to an F1 undergoing considerable change, with some teams entering, others leaving, a breakaway still a possibility and a new points system on the horizon. The obvious question is, how dominant can he be having been out of the game for three years? The sports world is littered with icons who hung on too long or came back too many times, from Jordan to Muhammad Ali. Does Schumacher have what it takes to catch up to F1's finest with a three-year head start?
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