S7 E7: France 2004 - Schumacher's four-stop masterclass
Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories
The Race Media Ltd
4.9 • 764 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2023
⏱️ 68 minutes
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Summary
The 2004 French Grand Prix was famously won by Michael Schumacher switching to a four-stop strategy to outfox Fernando Alonso and Renault on a day where Ferrari faced a bigger threat than usual in one of its most dominant seasons.
Mark Hughes and Scott Mitchell join host Glenn Freeman to look back at how Ferrari pulled the unique strategy off, and why Renault could do nothing about it. They also look back at everything else going on in F1 around the time of the race, including the debut for McLaren's B-spec 2004 car, the beginning of the end for Jarno Trulli at Renault, David Coulthard getting some rough treatment in the driver market, the FIA pushing to slow the cars down for 2005, and Max Mosley announcing he was stepping down at the end of the year as FIA president.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic |
| 0:02.7 | Michael Schumacher won so many races in 2004 that was quite difficult to make any of them stand out. |
| 0:16.4 | But he and Ferrari certainly achieved that at the French Grand Prix, |
| 0:19.5 | where he famously adopted a unique |
| 0:21.4 | four-stop strategy to outfox Fernando Alonzo's Renault team. |
| 0:25.7 | Second place to the dominant Schumacher-Friari combination wasn't a bad return at Renault's home |
| 0:29.9 | race, although there was a sucker punch, two corners from the end, when Yano Trulley lost |
| 0:34.4 | the final step on the podium to Rubens Barrichello, which was the last time Trilly scored points for the team before he was let go later in the year. |
| 0:43.5 | This was a massive weekend for off-track drama in F1 as well, with FIA President Max Mosley announcing he was stepping down, |
| 0:50.3 | but not before he started a process to force the teams to slow the cars down for 2005 on the grounds of safety, |
| 0:57.7 | which at the time he hoped would be his final act as president. |
| 1:01.5 | How wrong he was. |
| 1:07.7 | I'm Gleb Freeman and joining me for this episode of Bring Back V10s are Mark Hughes, |
| 1:11.9 | who was there that weekend in France, and Scott Mitchell. |
| 1:14.6 | So we've effectively got the A-team from the Race F1 podcast, |
| 1:18.1 | and I guess we should have got Ed's drawing to host this one, really. |
| 1:21.7 | But Mark, Ed's not here, so I'll ask the questions. |
| 1:24.5 | What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think back to that weekend in Manicor? |
| 1:29.9 | It was known coming in that this could be a tricky race for Ferrari. |
| 1:34.7 | So there's a sense of excitement. |
| 1:37.8 | Magnicor is very, very much a Michelin track. |
| 1:41.6 | Michelin even did the surface for it. |
... |
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