Monaco parking, matching Fangio and up close: Our favourite Schumacher moments

There was a time during the late 1990s and early 2000s where Michael Schumacher was one of the most famous athletes on the planet.

You had your Tiger Woods' your Wayne Gretzkys, your Lance Armstrongs (before he admitted to doping).

Schumacher was among that rare-brand of athlete known even by those with just a passing interest in sport.

That's what five straight titles in that Rosso Cavalino Rampante will do for you.

Sadly though, Schumacher has not been seen in public for a decade, since suffering severe head injuries in a skiing accident on December 29th, 2013.

Today is the 10th anniversary of that, and so the RacingNews365 team have selected our favourite Schumacher moments.

Let us know in the comments what your favourite Michael Schumacher moment is!

Jake Nichol - Monaco qualifying 2006

Keke Rosberg called it the "dirtiest" thing he'd ever seen in F1 and Sir Jackie Stewart even suggested he be banned from the race, but for me, my favourite Schumacher moment has to be his parking attempt in qualifying for the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix.

On pole after the provisional runs in Q3, Schumacher was 0.190s down on his best time through Sector 2 on the second lap as Fernando Alonso was on a pole lap behind.

So, rounding Rascasse, Schumacher rather pathetically locked up and stumbled into the barrier, but not quite making contact. The result, yellow flags were deployed and Alonso could not take pole as Dick Dastardly himself did.

After investigating the stewards chucked Schumacher out and made him start at the back as Alonso won.

The reason this sticks in my mind is simply because I love the audacity of a driver who is prepared to dabble in the dark arts and go beyond that limit to try and win. Whether you agree with what Schumacher did, you can't help but admire the mindset of: 'I'm not going to let you beat me, because I'm just better than you.'

Essentially it was a harmless action that only backfired and brought harm to Schumacher himself - just as Dastardly and his sidekick Mutley would often suffer in Wacky Races.

You can also throw in the title-deciding collisions with Damon Hill (1994) and Jacques Villeneuve (1997). The nerve to try and take the other guy out to win the title goes against every natural instinct of a racing driver but to actually try it (and be successful once) deserves a little respect, if not agreement.

Away from Grand Prix racing, who can ever forget when Schumacher appeared as The Stig on Top Gear in 2009?

It's the most iconic moment in the Clarkson-Hammond-May era and was only possible as Ferrari refused to allow regular Stig Ben Collins to drive the Ferrari FXX.

Fergal Walsh - Matching Fangio

For 45 years, Juan Manuel Fangio's record of five World Championships stood untouched. Alain Prost came closest to besting the Argentine but retired from F1 at the end of 1993 with four titles to his name, having narrowly missed out on taking a handful more.

The year following Prost's final season in F1, Schumacher won his first title (albeit in controversial circumstances) with the Benetton team.

Another title followed a year later before he opted to make a switch to Ferrari, and it was at the Italian squad where the German gained his notoriety for being one of the greatest drivers the sport has ever seen.

After prevailing in the 2000 and 2001 seasons (ending Ferrari's 19-year Drivers' Championship drought), Schumacher entered the 2002 campaign as the man to beat.

However, no one could get close to Schumacher as he dominated the season to take 11 race wins and 17 podiums, marking the only occasion to date that a driver has finished on the podium at every round during a season.

Schumacher secured the title at the French Grand Prix with six races to go in the season to set a new record for the shortest time in which a Drivers' Championship had been clinched, while also matching Fangio's title tally.

He would, of course, go on to take two more World Championships and make the record his own until it was matched by Lewis Hamilton in 2020.

Rory Mitchell - Watching him live

It was an unusually cold and rather wet day at Silverstone during the 2012 British Grand Prix.

Friday and Saturday had resembled Glastonbury on TV, so it was not the most encouraging thing to be advised to wear wellington boots for my first Grand Prix in person.

My dad had drove down from Liverpool to Silverstone in the early hours of the morning so we could catch all the acton; GP3, GP2, Porsches, Formula 1.

Apart from the weather there was two other things that stood out to me that day: the sound of the V8 engines and seeing Michael Schumacher in the car.

I'd grew up a Schumacher fanatic, so finally seeing him in his natural habitat was a real privilege. The day-glow red helmet and gloves in the Mercedes W03 with the unusual stepped nose were easy to spot, while standing on the National pit straight just after Woodcote.