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Schumacher keeps everybody guessing

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-24 08:41

LONDON, March 23 - Michael Schumacher is relaxed and having fun. Unless, of course, he is feeling despondent and ready to retire.

And if he is more relaxed than before, is it because he is going or staying?

Trying to decipher the Ferrari ace's body language in the early races of the season has become a new paddock pastime as the seven times champion keeps everyone guessing about his plans beyond 2006.

"He didn't enjoy (Bahrain), it was patently obvious," 1996 champion Damon Hill said this week, attending a test session for the DTM touring car series at Brands Hatch as a guest of Mercedes.

"He didn't know what to do with his hands on the rostrum," Hill told Reuters.

"Even if he came second, he used to leap up and down and wave his arms around and I used to think 'Cocky bastard, I've won the race and he's second, what's he doing?'

"But he didn't look like he could take much more of that treatment.

"He doesn't like losing. If that drags on then the appeal of just driving a Formula One car will go away and he will start to think; Not a bad record."

Others saw it differently: "Schuey is visibly happier than we have ever seen him," declared columnist Mark Hughes in Britain's Autosport magazine on Thursday.

"There's a lightness about him that is very different to the former intensity."

CONSTANT SPECULATION

Schumacher told reporters he was happy enough after finishing a close second in Bahrain, beaten by world champion Fernando Alonso after almost banging wheels with the Renault as the Spaniard emerged from the pit lane.

That was believable, particularly in the light of his dismal 2005 season when the most successful driver the sport has seen won just the six-car U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis, but he will not be really happy until he wins again.