[rfuerst911sc]

I want to say up front I am a MS fan. I have been reading various posts on here regarding MS and his career, his style etc. and I wanted to share my opinion based on a event I attended a few years ago. Aprox. 2 years ago our local Porsche club was lucky enough to have David Hobbs and Steve Matchet ( sp? ) as guest speakers at our Christmas party. Both of these guys had nothing but good things to say about MS and you can take that for what it's worth. But what really caught my attention was what Steve Matchet had to say. He said that when he was at Reneault that MS was putting in tons of hours with the team, staying very late night after night working with the engineers to understand what he was feeling when he drove the car. Steve also said it was not unusual for MS to suddenly disappear for 20-30 minutes and then appear pushing a cart with coffee,donuts,pasteries etc. and delivering it to the crew. It sure sounded like Michaels people skills were much better than what the media portrayed. According to Steve -Michael knew everyones name at Reneault and Ferrari and called everyone by their first name. Steve said this really helped everyone think they were part of the team and was very motivating for all involved.Also according to Steve he never saw a driver that could give feedback to the engineers like Michael and be so accurate compared to the downloaded telemetry. From what Steve said the engineers ask the drivers to give verbal feedback for every turn and each turn is sliced up to entry,apex and exit and MS could do a 30 minute run and give this type of feedback for every turn for every lap and it would be spot on vs. the telemetry!! This conversation just had me riveted to every word Steve had to say, I was truly blown away by the evening. Steve is a excellent speaker and knows what he is talking about and I respect his opinion. I really believe Michael will leave a void in F1 and will be missed.Flame suit on.