F1 is no stranger to periods of extreme dominance from a single team or driver. It is one of the few constants across the championship’s 75-year history.
From Juan Manuel Fangio clinching five of the first eight drivers’ titles to Max Verstappen winning over 86 per cent of grands prix in 2023, each era has been, at least partially, defined by a pre-eminent power.
One such period was Michael Schumacher’s record-breaking run of five consecutive drivers’ crowns with Ferrari from 2000-04, a feat the aforementioned Verstappen will attempt to emulate this season.
However, there was another particularly impressive run earlier in the German’s F1 career that underlines his ability and formidable consistency.
Whilst driving for Benetton, which is the modern-day Alpine team, the 91-time grand prix winner went over two-and-a-half years without finishing a race off the podium.
From the Australian Grand Prix in 1992, that year’s season finale, to the Monaco Grand Prix in 1995, Schumacher did not take the chequered flag outside the top three.
Whilst there were several retirements, something still common during the early 1990s – and two disqualifications in 1994, the former of which led to a two-race ban – it is a near-incomprehensible run of form.
Over that spell, Schumacher had four third-place finishes, eight second-place results and 12 victories, along with 10 retirements.
The run ended at the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix, in which he finished fifth. He led the race until a late gearbox problem required a long pit stop, leaving Ferrari driver Jean Alesi to take his only victory in F1.
Coincidentally, in the hours after the race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the first rumours emerged that Schumacher had signed a contract with the Scuderia to race for the Italian team in 1996.
