Jock Clear Exclusive: What Made Michael Schumacher Different

I've thought more and more about this. I think it was true to say that as a driver he was the most complete driver.

In some ways it would be almost sacrilegious to say that he was a jack of all trades and master of none. Actually, he was a jack of all trades and master of all trades, almost.

But I think in the true sense of the jack of all trades, master of none, he would admit he wasn't the quickest. He would admit that he wasn't the bravest. He had a lot of admiration for a lot of other drivers in various areas.

But the great thing about Michael was he literally, and I hate using this term, left no stone unturned. It was something he had the mental bandwidth to deal with. And a lot of drivers probably don't. I don't mean that disrespectfully, but they know they don't.

Michael did that very effectively by getting the right people around him and understanding the really big picture. Everything was in the right place for Michael because he created an environment where everything was in the right place for him. He knew all of these things are critical.

Muhammad Ali said it's not the mountain in your path that's going to stop you, it's the pebble in your shoe. Michael understood very well where the pebbles were.

The first thing I do before I get out and start running is just take my shoes off and make sure that there are no pebbles in there. A lot of drivers go out running and you know six, seven miles in they're like okay I've got a pebble in my shoe I'm going to have to stop and sort this out and then the race is lost then. Michael had such a good vision of the whole picture, the big picture.

His way of dealing with people… it's not as simple as just being he was such a nice guy. There were things about Michael that weren't very nice. There were times when he could be not a very nice guy. He had a very edgy side to his character when he wanted to and we saw that in the cockpit a few times. But he had a very engaging character where when he wanted to get people on side, he knew how to do it.

When I engineered Rosberg in 2010, Michael was on the other side of the garage. Nico and Michael were very different. Nico was offered a place at Imperial to do engineering. So, he had a very good engineering background.

There were lots of places where Michael was quicker than Nico. And Nico would look at the data with me and he'd say, 'What's Michael doing here? What's he doing here? Why?'

And there were times when I felt like saying to Nico, close the laptop and just sit and look at the man. Listen to him and listen to how he talks to people and watch him, watch his body language.

I said to Nico what you're not getting is how well Michael engaged with people and how well everybody wanted to be on Michael's car. Everybody wanted Michael to win. Everybody wanted Michael to be their best mate. He just engendered that sort of support, naturally. There was nothing forced about it. He wasn't calculated about it; he was just a very engaging character and in a very competitive environment that's the kind of thing that makes a difference.

When you get to this level, they're all capable of putting in a very quick lap, but the ones who are really successful are the ones who see the bigger picture and bring the little additional bits that make a difference on a Saturday and Sunday. Michael had the best balance of all of those things.

Lewis has some of those strengths in some of the areas. Lewis is probably a more naturally talented driver than Michael, but he didn't have the full picture in the way Michael did.

Sebastian Vettel was very similar to Michael in some ways. I would love to have worked with Max [Verstappen] and to see where he sits in the sort of Hamilton, Schumacher, [Mika] Häkkinen spectrum.

Pure speed? I think Häkkinen was the one who he felt was very, very quick. I know in those latter years, he had a lot of time for Seb, and I think he very much enjoyed his relationship and friendship with Seb.

There was a lot to learn from Seb, and I think even Michael felt there was a lot he learned from Seb in those last few years about how intelligent a driver Seb was.

Michael was there in the background when Seb was winning those championships, and I know he was frustrated that he couldn't be taking the fight to him.

I know how much he admired Seb from afar during those years around 2010-12. Other than that, he didn't really talk about other drivers from the previous eras.