UR TV CAST

No less a source than Gianni Agnelli, patriarch of the Fiat empire, has fuelled suggestions that Irvine could yet be dropped for next season by remarking on the talent of Mika Hakkinen, whose contract with McLaren-Mercedes expires at the end of the year. As an experienced observer of Ferrari affairs pointed out, Agnelli is not noted for making gratuitous statements.Despite the seemingly endless test sessions Ferrari have had at Monza – they were at work again there yesterday – Schumacher implies Williams -Renault should be better equipped for the Italian Grand Prix. He is content to keep Eddie Irvine alongside him, arguing the benefits of continuity and understanding. Besides, he said, he had always been quicker than his team- mates. “I could try to slow down,” he added.There is, however, a lobby in Italian circles for a stronger second driver who might enable them to aspire to the constructors’ championship as well as the driver’s title in future seasons. He maintains he is more concerned with “other details”.Those may well include the identity of his team-mate.

It is thought he is seeking another $10m (pounds 6.5m) a year on top of his current $25m, but then money does not appear to be an issue with Ferrari either. He craves just to be one of the people, yet he knows it is no longer possible. That is why his traditional, “impromptu” walk into the woods here to meet his fans has become a stage-managed production.For all his reservations about life with Ferrari, Schumacher is already well down the road to negotiating an extension of his contract to the end of 1998 He insists money is not the issue. I am not so sure of Italians.” Schumacher has never overtly courted the public He enjoys the support, and patently revels in it Hero worship, however, he finds difficult to cope with He recoils when people touch and grab him.

We had known Mansell mania, we had seen Senna’s fan club all around the world, yet nothing like this. It makes the Germany of the 1930s eerily easy to comprehend.”Yes,” he conceded, “also Germans, but not in the same way. “And, anyway, it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been a girl.”But have not the Germans also gone wild for Schumacher? At this race they had turned up in their scores of thousands, as they had elsewhere throughout Europe, spreading the campsites across the Ardennes landscape as never before. And Monza will be bedlam.”It is always like this in life,” he said philosophically “There are good things and not so good things. I feel that people are giving me respect but they are so emotional They lost control. They like to kiss you and take you.”He was referring to an incident at a recent test, when an admirer had an apparently irresistible compulsion to lunge at Schumacher as he posed for photographers, and planted a kiss on him.”He could at least have shaved,” the champion joked.