Fuelling Around podcast: Johnny Herbert on competing with Michael Schumacher and winning at Silverstone

Former Formula 1 racer and Sky Sports pundit Johnny Herbert joins hosts Jason Plato and Dave Vitty on the award-winning podcast Fuelling Around to discuss his career, what Michael Schumacher was like away from the track, and his dream drive.

Herbert is one of the UK’s most recognisable faces in F1 thanks to his 11 years of racing on the grid and his decade-long career as a pundit for Sky Sports.

The 59-year-old reveals all about what Schumacher was like off the grid, how it felt to win a home grand prix at Silverstone, and his time in the GT Academy.

Johnny Herbert on what Michael Schumacher was like away from the track

Herbert competed with some of the biggest names in Formula 1 history during his time on the track, including Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Schumacher. But it was the latter who Herbert discussed on the podcast, explaining what the German icon was like when he wasn’t racing.

“He was a good man, Michael, with a great, great sense of humour, but he never showed it and he didn’t want to show it either,” Herbert explained.

“I’ll tell you one story about Michael. My wife and Corinna (Schumacher’s wife) got on very well in the early days. We’d done Brazil and Argentina and came back to Imola, and my wife was sitting down in the hospitality (suite). Corinna came in, said ‘hi’, and they never spoke to each other for the rest of the year.

“And I think that was Michael almost (thinking), because they’re getting on so well, they might find out how I click. So don’t mix together. And I found that disappointing actually that it fed down to the wives, very odd.

“But then you can’t take away what he achieved. It’s part of the make up. We see that in some regard with Max (Verstappen); there’s a very similar ‘Michael-ish’ type of mentality that is there, which is very different to Lewis Hamilton.”

Plenty more episodes of Fuelling Around to enjoy

Series seven is coming towards the final straight, but if you haven’t listened to Fuelling Around before, you’ll be glad to know there’s a wealth of previous episodes from six series, and the current seventh, for you to listen to.

A host of celebrity guests have littered the award-winning podcast that has so far produced a string of excellent shows to listen to.

You can also tune into Fuelling Around on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or various other platforms if you want to see what all the fuss is about.