The Unsung

It took a racing department of 240 people and a huge budget to put Michael Schumacher on top of the world and make him the third millennium’s first Formula One champion driver. A department bursting at the seams with people who receive little outside recognition of their efforts, while the title holder savors the international public adulation their hard work—and, in Schumacher’s case, the Ferrari F1-2000 they designed, developed and ran—has brought him.

Yet no one means to sideline the members of a racing department and its suppliers, it just happens: it is the nature of the job. However, without the men and women who make a race team successful—the designers, engine specialists, aerodynamicists, mechanics, tire fitters, fuellers, secretaries and so on—none of our heroes would have become, well, heroes.