Franz Tost pinpoints Michael Schumacher’s biggest quality in addition to talent. Franz Tost reveals Michael Schumacher's biggest quality in addition to talent .

Michael Schumacher, talent and mindset
Those who had the fortune to work alongside Michael Schumacher will tell you how much the German impressed during tests at Fiorano and Maranello with his ability to lap consistently to the tenth for dozens and dozens of consecutive laps. This denoted a capacity for concentration in any context and an out-of-scale mental strength: qualities that are partly innate but also structured over time, in parallel with human maturation. On the occasion of the German’s 55th birthday, former AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost emphasized this aspect of Kaiser Michael.

Franz Tost’s comments
“Despite talent and car control, champions are such because they have the will to continue improving. And this will is fueled by the mind,” he said in a recent interview for German tabloid newspaper Bild. “This was an extremely pronounced characteristic in Michael.”

The Austrian added how, on that fateful day of the Méribel accident, he was absolutely serene because he was aware of Schumacher’s skiing skills: “I wasn’t worried because I often went skiing with Michael. He was an excellent skier who didn’t take risks. When I realized the consequences of the accident, I couldn’t believe it.”

Franz Tost and the young champions
The Austrian knew Michael Schumacher well before the German arrived in Formula 1: it was indeed 1989, and Kaiser Michael was just a young hopeful in the German Formula 3 team of his manager Willi Weber, who had Franz Tost as his team manager. The same Franz Tost, which about 25 years later, would discover another driving phenomenon, Max Verstappen, with whom comparisons with Schumacher are becoming more frequent every day.

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