My Yahoo!The Incredible Michael Schumacher
NEW YORK - Auto racer Michael Schumacher--Schumi to his legions of devoted fans--has set another Formula One record.
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| Michael Schumacher |
In winning the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday, his 160mph red Ferrari took the checkered flag for the tenth time this season, breaking the record for wins in a season of nine he has shared with Nigel Mansell since 2000. And Schumi still has three more drives in the 17-race championship to improve on it. That's a little like scoring 100 points in a basketball game--and still having another quarter to play.
No one has won as many Grand Prix races as the German. He so dominates his sport that he has already wrapped up this year's driver's championship. In doing so, he tied the record of five titles held by the great Argentine driver of the 1950s, Juan Manuel Fangio. The bookmakers have him a 1-3 favorite to surpass it next year in what will be only his tenth complete season of Formula One racing.
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| Tiger Woods |
Jordan has made more money than Schumacher over that period--$260.3 million vs. $248 million. But Jordan's best days are behind him (see chart below). Schumacher and Woods ($221 million since 1998) are still in their primes.
It will probably stay that way for a while. There is a dearth of extraordinarily talented young stars in either of their sports. Salary caps in several other major sports limit earnings.
Woods, though, will almost certainly have more staying power than Schumacher. At 27, he is six years the younger, and golf lets players excel until a much older age than motor racing. Arnold Palmer, whose status in professional golf is as colossal as Schumacher's in motor racing, still made $17 million last year as a 72-year-old. Schumacher has said that he would like to race until he's 40, but one moment's misjudgment or misfortune at 160mph could end his career or his life. Two former champions, French-Canadian Gilles Villeneuve and Brazil's Ayrton Senna, both died on the racetrack.
Woods, who is predicted to make $1 billion from golf by the time he is 35, also has the commercial advantage of being a household name both inside and outside the U.S., where Schumacher and his sport are little known. U.S. motor sports fans follow NASCAR racing. But it is a chump-change sport compared to Formula One. Its money leader, Jeff Gordon, made $20 million last year--little more than a quarter of Schumacher's earnings.
It is the huge global popularity of Formula One racing that explains Schumacher's fat paychecks. It is the most widely watched regular sporting event, boasting a worldwide television audience of between 300 million and 400 million for each of its 17 Grand Prixes held at race tracks around the world, starting in Australia in March and finishing in Japan in October.
Schumacher's two-year contract with Ferrari, a division of the Italian automaker Fiat (nyse: FIA - news - people ), guarantees him $35 million a year. The rest comes from win bonuses, endorsements and merchandising. (He has sold 300,000 Schumi caps at $30 each.)
A German investment outfit inked an $8 million, three-year deal to have him wear a 4-inch ad on the baseball cap he wears before and after races. His bright red Ferrari team driving suit is emblazoned with the logos of such multinational brands as Philip Morris' (nyse: MO - news - people ) Marlboro cigarettes, Shell motor oil, Vodafone (nyse: VOD - news - people ) mobile telephony and FedEx (nyse: FDX - news - people ) package delivery.
And yet Schumacher could be doing a lot better than he is. Woods and Jordan cultivated an image of the consummate good guy. The German drivers' aggressive--some say dangerous--driving style and the controversy surrounding his race tactics (he was disqualified from the drivers' championship standings in 1997 after colliding with Villeneuve) has made him anything but a media darling.
While sports bad boys, like Allen Iverson and Dennis Rodman, do well financially, their appeal typically isn't broad enough to win the big endorsement contracts of the "boys next door"--especially once they retire.
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