Henry, who has been the motor-racing correspondent of The Guardian since the time when every competing driver was preceded by a man with a flag, reckons that Schumacher rates no better than 11th in the all-time pantheon, a judgment that is unlikely to have publishers queuing up for the German translation rights to his work.
This will not bother the author terribly much. Henry is Old School, in the best possible sense, and rates his drivers not just on how many races they win but on how they went about their racing. Indeed, one of his top 20 never won any races at all, and no petrolhead worth their octane rating should need too much help to guess the identity of that luckless individual.
For Henry, Schumacher blotted his copybook on too many occasions with unsportsmanlike content, and also took far too much care to ensure that he was never paired with a team-mate of similar ability. But his rating is just one of many that seem sure to provoke lively debate wherever motorsport enthusiasts congregate.
| 
|