The comeback that wasn't

It seemed to good to be true, and in the end it was. It could have been the sporting story of the summer: an event to reinvigorate a season that has otherwise been marred by politics and controversy. However, it came to a premature end yesterday when Michael Schumacher announced that the neck injury he sustained whilst motorcycling in February will prevent him for making his planned return to F1 at the European Grand Prix in Valencia.

Whether this announcement means Schumacher will be unavailable for the rest of the season is not yet clear. If he is fully fit in a couple of months, for example, then there is still the chance that he might return for Brazil (16-18 October) and Abu Dhabi (30 October - 1 November). And Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo is still hopeful that he might have a race seat in 2010 - potentially forming a Formula One 'dream team' alongside, presumably, Massa and Alonso - if the team is given permission to field a third car.

But there remains the suspicion that Schumacher's decision to call off his return is down to more than just concerns over his fitness. After all, if there had been any doubt over his physical readiness to drive, then it seems unlikely that his comeback would have been trumpeted so quickly and so definitively by Ferrari - mere days, it should be remembered, after Massa's accident in qualifying in Hungary.

He completed a 67-lap test of the F2007 at Mugello on 31 July, with a best time of 1m 23.736s. It is difficult to judge just how competitive this time was, given that he was running GP2-specification slick tyres. But a worthwhile comparison can be made with Felipe Massa's test on 27 July 2007 at the same circuit, running the same car in similar track conditions. Then, Massa was able to achieve 1m 20.194s in 68 laps - more than 3.5s faster than Schumacher now, and on grooved tyres as well. Granted this was Schumacher's first test, and he may have been suffering from his injury, but nevertheless it is a sizeable gap to have to make up. Moreover, he still has to experience the F60, which, due to the radical changes to the aerodynamic regulations for 2009, is a different beast altogether.

In terms of lap times the grid is much closer now than it was when Schumacher last raced. Taking the Hungarian Grand Prix as an example, in 2006 the gap between the fastest and the slowest qualifying times was 4.5s, whereas this year all cars were covered by exactly 2s. With the difference between success and failure being so small, Schumacher would need to know for certain that he was able to compete at this level. It would not be enough for him to just make up the numbers, or even scrape into Q2, for example.

For pride as much as anything he would need to prove to himself that he could still race at the highest level, or - at the very least - on a par with his team-mate. Were his lap times at Mugello judged - by himself or the team - to be simply not good enough to make the comeback a feasible proposition? Was there just too much ground to make up before Valencia?

Schumacher has nothing more to prove. He is 40 years old, with 91 victories in Grands Prix behind him, and seven world championships. To see him race again would have delighted fans around the world. To see him perhaps even win would have made it the comeback story of a generation. But there was always the risk of embarrassment if he found himself no longer as competitive as he had thought. It would have been a disappointment for himself as much as for the fans, who would have seen only a faded legend vainly trying to recapture former glories. It was a risk which perhaps he was unwilling to take, and, in the end, probably the right decision.
 
Photo reproduced under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license from an image uploaded to Flickr.com by Rampant Gian.