Michael Schumacher's 'GOAT' legacy continues to be unchallenged a decade after his retirement

It was the 2012 F1 Brazilian GP when Michael Schumacher last completed a competitive lap in the sport. By the time he retired, he had achieved everything that was on the table. He had the most points, pole positions, wins, and championships.

What made him stand out, however, was not the fact that he had these accolades. It was the aura that the driver had, and it stayed with him until he retired. The day Michael Schumacher retired, in the eyes of many, he was the GOAT, or, as they say, the "greatest of all time".

12 years after his retirement, it's hard to doubt that his legacy as the Greatest continues to shine bright. The concept of "GOAT" is, of course, subjective. For many, the drivers with the most success in their careers get it. I have a different view of why Michael Schumacher takes the cake. Let's take a look.

It's not about the statistics alone

When it comes to F1, the first thing to understand is that the results and the success entirely depend on the car. However, other aspects cannot be forgotten, especially, when it comes to statistics.

When Formula 1 first began, we had less than 10 races in a year. By the time the sport gained prominence, we had a case of an increase in the number of races. It's not that long ago that we had less than 20 races in a season.

Right now, we're at 24 races. With that parameter, many contemporary drivers will feature in the list of all-time greatest. When statistics are entirely dependent on the car under you and with an increasing number of races per season, sometimes statistics are just not the right metric.

This is precisely why Lewis Hamilton, who is the most successful driver in F1 history and has surpassed a lot of Schumacher records, does not supersede him in terms of performance.

Success is a brilliant criterion to measure greatness, but it cannot be the only one.

The impact of Michael Schumacher on teams

There aren't many teams on the F1 grid that would see a sudden change of culture when a driver steps into the squad. To top it off, there aren't many teams that are either championship-ready or already the grid's benchmarks by the time a driver is ready to leave.

This was the impact that Michael Schumacher had on every team he became a part of. After just one race for Jordan, he moved to Benetton in 1991. The German was a part of their rise until it won the title in 1994 and 1995. As soon as he left, the Flavio Briatore-led team was not the same.

His next stint with a team was at Maranello. He took Ferrari, a team that was a perennial underperformer, and turned it into a championship-winning juggernaut. Schumacher's brilliance was not in just his driving ability but also in his awareness of the people he needed around him and who could help him win.

The same holds true for his final stint in F1 when Schumacher was part of Mercedes, a team that was at a nascent stage and was ready to be a frontrunner by 2013. In terms of driver talents, who leave people surprised by what they do behind the 4 wheels, many make their way on that list.

However, there aren't many who understand what it takes to build a title-winning team. Schumacher stood apart when it came to this basic understanding of the sport.

Every elite driver has had his 'grey' moments

Arguably the biggest blot on Michael Schumacher's career continues to be the not-so-savvy moments on track where he took things too far. The German's collision to win the 1994 F1 title has been suspect, to say the least.

His collision in 1997 with Jacques Villeneuve is something that is still cited as something unsportsmanlike, and his defensive driving skills were almost always borderline. But looking at the history of the sport, which elite driver has not stepped over the line?

We have Lewis Hamilton being involved in lying to the stewards and getting disqualified from a race. We've had his involvement in the secret tire test conducted by Mercedes. In the past, we've had Alain Prost crashing into Ayrton Senna to win the title and then the Brazilian returning the favor next season.

Almost every elite driver in history has had a fair share of transgressions here and there. As Senna once said, if you don't go for the gap, you're not a racing driver. These elites are wired to go for these moments where they can gain half an inch. It's just how they're programmed, and it's never going to change.

The undisputed nature of being the best for a decade

There aren't many drivers in F1 history that can unanimously claim to be the undisputed best driver on the grid for close to a decade. In the current era, Max Verstappen is on a 4-year run where he is quite clearly the best on the grid.

Hamilton, on the other hand, had an era where probably the difference between him and his contemporaries Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel was the car that they had under him. Senna had stiff competition from Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, and Nelson Piquet before him. It's not common to see a driver stand out as the best on the grid for an extended period.

Michael Schumacher did that from 1994 until 2005 when Alonso took over. The German became the undisputed best driver on the grid after Senna's untimely death and while there were some brilliant talents on the grid at the time like Mika Hakkinen, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen, and others, Schumacher stood out.

Such dominance and such a level of performance was unprecedented and continues to be even now.

Ferrari's lack of success is the proof of his impact

If there's any team that embodies what it means to be with and without Michael Schumacher, it's Ferrari. When the German joined the team, the team had not won a title in a while (since 1979) and it wasn't considered to be on the same level as Williams or McLaren at the time.

As fate would have it, Schumacher won five world titles with Ferrari. What is, however, even more interesting is what happened to the team once the German left. Schumacher retired in 2006 from F1 and was replaced by Kimi Raikkonen at the team.

The Finnish driver would win the title in a team that still had a somewhat similar DNA as Schumacher had left it in. Since 2007, Ferrari has not won a single world title.

The team has come close multiple times but has been unable to cross the line. Why? It's the same issues that plagued the team pre-1995 (when Michael Schumacher) in terms of internal politics and lack of insulation from the boardroom.

It's not as if the team has not had great drivers don a Ferrari overall in the past 15 or so years. Fernando Alonso spent a lot of time with the team, and so did Sebastian Vettel. The fact that neither could win is a testament to the job that Michael Schumacher was able to do with the team.