F1 Betting: Schumacher for the title? Forget it

Formula One / Ralph Ellis / 03 February 2010 / Leave a Comment

"As for Schumacher winning the Championship, forget it. An injury that serious will inevitably come back to haunt him, even if it doesn’t happen in Bahrain or any of the other early races."

Ralph Ellis knows all about the dangers of returning to sport when you're past it. That's why he won't be backing Michael Schumacher to win the 2010 Drivers' Championship.

A year ago I was persuaded to dust off my football boots and try to play again. A friend was running a side in the local over-35s league. "It's all very friendly," he said. "Roll-on, roll off subs, then a pint in the pub after, it's all great fun."

I'm pretty fit for my age, I've run the London Marathon for the last three years and will again this April, so I thought I'd give it a go. But my comeback lasted roughly 40 minutes until a hamstring went ping when I tried to take a corner. My 53-year-old body couldn't take the different stress and strain, and those football boots are now back in the bottom of the wardrobe to stay.

It was a reminder that no amount of training is the same as actually competing. And having read the reports coming back from the first Grand Prix testing sessions of the new season I wonder whether Michael Schumacher is in for the same sort of shock.

The seven-times Formula One champion is being feted back onto the track in Valencia, and his first outing put him more than half a second ahead of his new Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg. He was third on the time sheets on the first day, took yesterday off and will be driving again today. Meanwhile yesterday's second day of testing had Felipe Massa's Ferrari as quickest, with the emerging Sauber talent of Kamui Kobayashi second and Lewis Hamilton third.

Schumacher is full of excited talk at how good he feels. "I have worked very well, prepared myself extremely precisely, and this is the result," he says. And all that has made him, incredibly, as short as [5.2] to celebrate his return to regular competition by recapturing the world title. He's one of a group of three favourites with Fernando Alonso [5], and Hamilton [5.3]. Don't be suckered into backing him.

Cast your mind back instead to the tail end of last season when Schumacher was going to return to the track for Ferrari, only for his comeback to be halted by the remnants of a neck injury he'd sustained falling off a motorbike.

His personal doctor, Johannes Peil, is in Valencia this week and for the couple of hacks who have made the effort to track him down he's offered no guarantees that the injury is any better able to stand up to the rigours of racing. "Will the neck be OK for the season's opening race in Bahrain next month?" he was asked. "We will have to wait," was the less than confident response.

Last August Peil said of the healing process: "It could be three weeks, three months, three years. There is no way of testing the neck without driving a Formula One car. Nothing can replicate the forces generated."

Schumacher is [1.01] or [1.03] to lay that he'll drive in a Grand Prix race at some time this season. I fancy that's well worth chancing six quid to win 200, if even his own doctor can't come out with anything more positive. If you're a regular reader you'll know we've some profit in the bank to risk on this one, because last July when the rest of the world were just as excited at his comeback we laid the prospects of him driving again in the 2009 season at just [1.09].

As for him winning the Championship, forget it. An injury that serious will inevitably come back to haunt him, even if it doesn't happen in Bahrain or any of the other early races. Sometimes your body simply sends you a message that it's time to pack up.

Five things you might not know about Kamui Kobayashi

1. Born in September 1986 in the Japanese town of Amagasaki, his dad was a sushi chef - he was nine when his parents took him go-karting as a birthday treat and he took to the sport instantly, winning the Toyota SL All Japan Tournament Cadet Class series twice.

2. Toyota recruited him to their young driver programme, but he moved to Europe in 2004 to take a chance with Renault to develop his career, winning the Formula Renault Eurocup crown the following year

3. He now lives in Paris and says: "There is an interesting atmosphere which I really like because of the mix of the big businessmen, the artists, and the designers"

4. He made his F1 debut for Toyota in the Brazilian Grand Prix last year and had lined up a permanent drive before the Japanese firm announced their withdrawal from the sport

5. A Karate black belt, he's into R & B music - but admits he finds it hard to wake up in the morning and has overslept several times on important race days