Former Michael Schumacher team-mate reveals awkward toilet meeting with seven-time F1 champion

Schumacher after the 2012 Hungarian Grand Prix — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Legends

Former Michael Schumacher team-mate reveals awkward toilet meeting with seven-time F1 champion

Michael Schumacher is one of the most successful F1 drivers of all time

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Tuesday 3 March 2026 16:12

A former colleague of seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher has revealed an awkward toilet meeting with the German, and how it turned into a joke at his expense.

Schumacher is one of the most successful drivers in the history of the sport, having won a joint-record seven world championship titles and sitting second in the all-time lists of grand prix wins, podiums and pole positions.

Having retired from the sport at the end of the 2006 season, Schumacher returned to F1 in 2010, heading up the new Mercedes works team.

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Alongside future world champion Nico Rosberg, he completed an all-German driver lineup, and the pair would remain in tact until 2012, when Schumacher decided to retire from the sport for good.

And in his final season at Mercedes, the team had a young British driver as their test driver, Sam Bird, who was just 25 at the time.

Bird went on to become a successful racer in the World Endurance Championship and Formula E, but now the Brit has admitted his nerves at being part of the Mercedes outfit with one of the greatest racers of all time in Schumacher.

"I'd kind of met him before playing football in the charity match at Monaco and stuff like that," Bird told The Race. "But then all of a sudden I'm there in my new Mercedes kit as a driver at the rookie test in Abu Dhabi, and I'm about to have my first meeting as a team member.

"But before I do, I quickly nip to the toilet. I approach the loo and the indicator says green, so I push the door open and there he is. It's Michael, but with parts of Michael I'd not been expecting to see!

"Anyway, we had this meeting and Ross Brawn says: 'Look, everybody, we've got young Sam Bird here and he's going to be shadowing us this weekend and doing the rookie days for us and be our reserve. Please make him feel welcome. And, If you need to find him, he'll be hanging around outside the toilets'.

"Michael had obviously teed that up with Ross, and that kind of started it off, breaking the ice. Michael came over, gave me a hug afterwards, said, 'Welcome to the team'."

Schumacher's staggering F1 numbers

Schumacher retired for good in 2012 having racked up 92 career grand prix victories, at the time an all-time record by 40 to the nearest challenger, which then was Alain Prost.

Since retiring, however, two drivers have got closer to his wins tally in Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, and one has even usurped it, with Lewis Hamilton racking up 105 career victories.

Hamilton achieved a large proportion of those wins with Schumacher's old Mercedes team, too, while he is also the only other man to hold seven world championship titles.

A number of Schumacher records still stand, however, including being the only driver in history to have won five consecutive championship titles.

Schumacher is also the only driver who has had a season in which they stood on the F1 podium at 100 per cent of the races, with Schumacher achieving that staggering feat in 2002.

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