Michael Schumacher Biography

Michael Schumacher was the undisputed king of Formula One auto racing throughout the late 1990s and 2000s. As a teenager, Michael Schumacher raced karts, becoming the German and European Karting champion in 1987. By 1991 he was racing Formula 1 cars, winning his first Grand Prix a year later. Racing for Benetton, Schumacher won his first World Champion title in 1994. After four years with Benetton, he began driving for Ferrari, and in 2000 brought them their first world title in 21 years. His 2004 year is now legendary: he won 13 races in 18 tries, and claimed an unprecedented seventh overall Formula 1 championship. (His overall championships came in 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.) Schumacher remained a dominant force in the sport of Formula 1 racing through 2006, when he retired at the end of the season. In 2010 he returned to Formula 1, racing for the next three seasons with a new Mercedes team, but not quite regaining his former magic. He retired again after the 2012 racing season. In December of 2013 he was critically injured after falling and hitting his head on a rock at the French ski resort of Meribel; after months in a medically-induced coma, he left the hospital and was transported to his home in Switzerland in June of 2014. Very little information about his condition has been released; his manager, Sabine Kehm, said he had returned home to “continue his long phase of rehabilitation.”