Martin Brundle shares how he got drunk with Michael Schumacher to break the ice after a 5-year radio silence
Martin Brundle has recently revealed how he got drunk with Michael Schumacher to break the ice over something that has led to a five-year radio silence between the two. Brundle has been a regular in F1 punditry for decades now, and when he started the segments like the grid walk prior to a race, it was during the era when Schumacher was the benchmark in F1.
Brundle had a history with Michael Schumacher, as the two were teammates at Benetton for a year before the Brit was replaced. After Brundle's F1 career ended, he moved on to the role of being a commentator with British media and has done the role with broadcasters like BBC, ITV, and more recently Sky Sports.
As part of his role, Brundle had started doing the 'Gridwalk', a novel idea at the time where he would talk to drivers and team personnel just minutes before a race. In an interview with Sky Sports, Brundle revealed that even though this was an easier thing to do in the early days as he knew a lot of the drivers, it became a bit strange with Schumacher, who had become offended by a poorly translated quote in German.
Due to the quote, there was complete radio silence from Michael Schumacher towards Martin Brundle until the end of the first part of his career at Ferrari. It took Brundle to get drunk one night with the German to break the ice. Talking about what happened between the two, Brundle said (via planetF1.com):
“We got drunk together in a nightclub in Valencia when he was on his sabbatical between Mercedes and Ferrari, and we were fine after that. He was sort of hanging off my shoulder, he was like, ‘My team-mate, my team-mate’, and we sort of… It broke the ice again. So I really don’t know what the problem was, but that was a real shame.”
Brundle on Michael Schumacher's radio silence
Talking about how the gridwalk used to be in the past, Martin Brundle detailed how it was far less formal than it is right now. Drivers like Gerhard Berger and Michael Schumacher would just stop by and chat with him without much of an issue.
That changed when the German got upset over a mistranslated quote from Brundle.
“Drivers would stop by and have a good old chat,” he recalled. “I remember talking once to Michael Schumacher and Gerhard Berger at the same time, and could do what I wanted and go where I wanted to. The grid was deserted, generally speaking, back then.”
He added:
"Well, weirdly, we fell out, because something I said was translated, taken out of context, and translated into German and put in a headline in a newspaper. And Michael got very upset. I have no idea what it was to this day. And he wouldn’t speak to me for five years. It was really odd.”
Michael Schumacher did bury the hatchet with Martin Brundle during his second F1 stint and the German was more cordial with the Brit until his retirement from the sport.