Michael Schumacher's Most Successful F1 Car to be Auctioned
Michael Schumacher's Formula 1 car will be auctioned by RM Sotheby's. The auction house will hold the auction in Monterey, California from August 18-20.
One might think that Schumacher's most successful Formula 1 cars were those from 2000-2004, when he won the championship with Ferrari. However, this Ferrari F300 was driven by Schumacher in the 1998 season when he won seven championships, losing out to McLaren's Mika Hakkinen.
Despite this, the chassis 187 won all four races it entered. These were the Canadian, French, British, and Italian GPs. RM Sotheby's claims that chassis 187 is the only Ferrari F1 chassis to have run at least three races and won every race it entered.
Powered by a 3.0-liter V10 engine producing 800 hp, the F300's predecessor featured a "periscope" exhaust designed to draw heat away from the seven-speed sequential gearbox and sculpted air intakes that gave it a more streamlined appearance than the 1997 F310B Many improvements were made over the ...
In addition to his four wins in the No. 187 car, Schumacher won two more in 1998, in Argentina and Hungary. His teammate Eddie Irvine finished the season without a win. Ferrari kept chassis 187 until September 1999, when it was sold to its previous owner, who owned it for 23 years.
RM Sotheby's did not list a pre-auction estimate, but earlier this year another F300 was listed in the DuPont Registry for $4.9 million. This car was driven by Schumacher at the Luxembourg Grand Prix (held at the Nürburgring), where he finished second, and at the final race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, where he retired. Given the success of chassis 187, it should sell for more than chassis 189.