yener wrote:Schumacher told Ferrari before signed the contract that he wanted a Class 2 driver. So his teammate would not be his rival.
Maybe he saw Jos as a Second class.
That could explain it.
Well Jos was not Schumacher's choice, he was the test/reserve driver. If Schumacher did "choose" a teammate then it was Lehto. Lehto actually did get closer to Schumacher's times than Verstappen before he got injured. But he was still a lot slower. Herbert was closer again than those two, but still slower as he struggled also with the oversteer.
Schumacher didn't tell Ferrari in 1995/1996 that he wanted a class 2 driver. He signed a contract that made him the no.1 guy in the team, but didn't stipulate WHO his teammate would be. Schumacher I believe wanted Berger. He didn't fancy being teammate to Schumacher so he left and they got Irvine.
There is an interesting feature out there when the bbc took a look at the telemetry of Schumacher and Herbert's qualifying laps around Silverstone in 1995. Basically Schumacher's throttle trace is much more smooth and sensitive, with no jaggedy sudden jumps, while Herbert's is much more jagged and aggressive, with sudden lifts and acceleration. Meanwhile Schumacher's steering trace is all over the place with lots of corrections, while Herbert's is smooth.
Schumacher has said something to the effect that the 1995 car was like the 1994 car but even more oversteery and even more difficult to drive. But it was quick if you could control it, and he could control it.
It's also worth noting that, in 1994 (and generally in that era) the time gaps between cars were about twice what they are today. Mistakes cost you more time so the faster drivers gained more time compared to the slower ones. Senna was easily outqualifying Hill by 1.5-2 seconds, for example. Today that would be like outqualifying someone by 0.75-1 seconds.
