Ferrari chief feared 'explosion' over another Michael Schumacher title failure

Former Ferrari boss Jean Todt feared the team would "explode" if Michael Schumacher did not win the 2000 drivers' championship.

Schumacher ended 21 years of waiting for the Scuderia at that year's Japanese GP, winning at Suzuka to end the long drought stretching back to Jody Scheckter's 1979 title.

In doing so, Schumacher became a three-time F1 champion and kick-started his record-breaking run of five consecutive titles, with Juan Manuel Fangio, Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen all enjoying a run of four straight titles, but could not claim a fifth. 

Schumacher's victory came after near misses in 1997 when he was disqualified from the championship for trying to eliminate title rival Jacques Villeneuve in the finale; in 1998 when he stalled on the grid of the Suzuka showdown versus Mika Hakkinen as the Finn claimed the crown. 

In 1999, although the Ferrari was competitive, Schumacher suffered brake failure on the opening lap of the British GP, and crashed at Stowe, breaking his leg and missing the next six races until returning in Malaysia as team-mate Eddie Irvine challenged Hakkinen. 

Although Ferrari did claim its first constructors' title since 1983 that year, Irvine fell two points short of dethroning Hakkinen, who. engaged in another duel with Schumacher in 2000.

The two double champions combined for 13 of the 17 wins in the season, but after a run of four DNFs in five races across the European leg, Schumacher trailed Hakkinen by six points after the Finn's iconic overtake during the Belgian GP, diving to inside of backmarker Riccardo Zonta in a double-move at nearly 200mph. 

At this point, Todt has now explained how he feared the team would "explode" if Schumacher missed out once again before the former Kerpen karter rallied to win the Italian, United States, Japanese, and Malaysian GPs to steal Hakkinen's title away in the third of those.

"In 1997, we lost at the last race; in 1998, we lost at the last race when he stalled the car and earlier in the year, when he was lapping [David] Coulthard at Spa in the rain," Todt explained on the High Performance Podcast.

"He slowed down unnecessarily and [Michael] could not see and damaged his car, and in 1999, a mechanic's mistake during the formation lap [at the British GP] meant he lost his brakes [and broke his leg in a crash].

"We had Eddie Irvine (who finished two points behind Hakkinen), but in 1999, we finally won the constructors' championship, and we knew that 2000 was the last year, because if we had not won in 2000, clearly the team would have exploded.

"But we won. It was not obvious mid-way through the season, and I remember in a debriefing I said: 'We need to win the last four races, otherwise the team is gone,' and we won them.

"Then it was a dream period winning both championships in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004."