Michael Schumacher's Ferrari F1 car set to sell for €7.5m at auction

One of seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher's iconic Ferrari cars is up for sale, and fans can own a piece of F1 history, if they have a spare €7.5million lying around.

Schumacher raced with Ferrari between 1996-2006, winning five of his world championships in that time.

After claiming back-to-back titles at Benetton, he opted to make the switch to Maranello to race in the famous red of Ferrari, but it would take until his fifth season with the team before he could claim a third world championship.

The years between 1996-1999 were often frustrating for the German, and Ferrari, but he did still manage to claim 16 grands prix victories across those four seasons.

And now Schumacher's 1997 Ferrari F310 B is available to buy at auction, with auctioneers RM Sotheby's expecting the chassis to sell for between €5.5million-€7.5million (£4.7million-£6.5million).

The 1997 season saw Schumacher claim five grands prix victories, and challenge Jacques Villeneuve for the world championship, before ultimately being disqualified from the championship for an incident at the final race.

Schumacher headed into the season-ending European Grand Prix one point ahead of Villeneuve in the battle for the championship, and sought to make use of that advantage, seeming to turn into the Canadian racer in an attempt to take them both out of the race, which would of course have left Schumacher as champion.

However, the FIA deemed that Schumacher had caused an avoidable accident, and he was disqualified from the whole championship. The result of the grand prix anyway would have been enough for Villeneuve, with Schumacher ruled out of the race, but Villeneuve able to continue and finish in third.

The actual chassis on sale with RM Sotheby's was only taken as a reserve for the Japanese and European grands prix - arguably the two most dramatic races of the season - but it had previously been used by Schumacher during Belgian Grand Prix qualifying that year, and by team-mate Eddie Irvine for the Italian and Austrian grands prix.

The 1997 Ferrari car is a historic one, as it is also the final Ferrari to be designed by legendary F1 designer John Barnard.

Schumacher's Ferrari woes turn into serial success

While the team were not winning championships in the 90s - other than a solitary constructors' title in 1999 - Schumacher was not panicking too much because of the amount of grand prix victories that he was able to attain even in his early Ferrari days.

However, when his first Ferrari title came in 2000, there would have been much relief for the German, and for the team who had not achieved drivers' championship success since 1979.

What followed was arguably the greatest spell of dominance that the sport has ever seen. Schumacher won five consecutive championships between 2000-2004, an all-time record that is still yet to be matched.

Those titles also took him to seven championships in total, a record that has been matched by Lewis Hamilton, but has never been beaten.

In that time, Schumacher also rose to the top of the all-time lists of grand prix wins, podiums and pole positions, and he still sits second on all of those lists.

He retired at the end of 2006, before returning to F1 in 2010 with the Mercedes works team. This return did not go too well for Schumacher however, only adding one more podium across three seasons before retiring for good in 2012.

READ MORE: F1 World Champions: The full list from Farina to new king Lando Norris

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