Todt: “I signed the contract with Schumacher in just one day”

Schumacher and the historic transition to Ferrari Reconstruction is a word that has been associated with Ferrari many times by fans who dream of a return to success after almost 20 years of waiting. It’s a concept that requires patience: clearly not everyone is gifted with it, but the long-time Ferrari driver has learned to be. The last winning cycle of the Red, in fact, began in 1999, the sixth year of Jean Todt’s management and Michael Schumacher’s fourth season in Maranello: a Constructors’ World Championship that broke a total drought at Ferrari that had lasted 16 championships. Brick by brick, Todt rebuilt a team in disarray and gave new life to a disheartened environment. The decisive year was 1996, when he brought the then two-time world champion to Maranello thanks to a lightning deal: the two signed the contract in just one day. Todt’s words “Within a team, chassis and engine engineers often blame each other and in the end end up saying that there are no drivers. So I made sure that no one could say that we were missing a driver. Michael was the best, we discussed with him in mid-1995 and then we spent a day in Monte-Carlo with our lawyer Henri Peter and his manager Willy Weber. After one day, we signed the contract”, these were the words of the Frenchman to High Performance. “I think he thought that driving for Ferrari would be something different. He liked challenges.” Twelve months later, Todt scored – again from Benetton – the other two decisive market coups, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne: “Michael was very curious, and very professional. He didn’t want to tie himself to Ferrari without guarantees. So I contacted Ross at the same time for the position of technical director and Rory to offer him the role of chief designer. Both had worked with Michael at Benetton. Brawn and Byrne didn’t know that I had contacted them both, but naturally Michael was aware of it. And that’s how, at Little by little, we rebuilt the team.”