Sebastian Vettel does not usually speak about Michael Schumacher in those terms.

“Michael was my hero, my everything,” the four-time world champion says in the book, a line that has already travelled further than any other from the project.

The book, “Über Michael Schumacher und die deutsche Ära in der Formel 1” (On Michael Schumacher and the German Era in Formula 1) by journalist Alfred Weinzierl, was published on 22 October 2026 by Edel Sports in a 320-page hardcover edition priced at €29.90. Weinzierl built the book around in-depth interviews with seven German drivers: Vettel, Rosberg, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Nick Heidfeld, Nico Hülkenberg, Ralf Schumacher and Michael’s son Mick.

Between them, Schumacher, Vettel and Rosberg won twelve world titles across more than two decades. The book treats that run as a defined “German era” and lets the drivers who lived it do the talking.

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Rosberg: three years without a name

The warmest tribute sits a few pages from the coldest story.

Rosberg, who shared the Mercedes garage with Schumacher from 2010 to 2012, tells Weinzierl that the champion simply refused to acknowledge him in team meetings.

“I also believe that he didn’t mention my name once in three years during our meetings with the engineers,” Rosberg says, as reported by SPEEDWEEK in its review of the book. The 2016 world champion returns to those three seasons from his own perspective across several passages.

Frentzen and Ralf fill in the picture

According to SPEEDWEEK’s review, Frentzen, who raced against Schumacher through the 1990s at Sauber, Williams and Jordan, pushes back on the one-dimensional caricature of a ruthless operator, describing Schumacher as a phenomenon who showed from his Jordan and Benetton days that a new generation of drivers could be fast without constantly causing accidents.

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Ralf Schumacher adds the family-level detail. He recounts his father warning him against following his brother into the sport, telling him it had been lucky enough that one Schumacher had made it to Formula 1 and that there would not be a second.

A chess game on a private jet

SPEEDWEEK highlights a sharp character sketch involving Timo Glock on Schumacher’s private jet. Glock asked to take back a bad chess move and Schumacher waved it through. In a later game, when Glock’s opponent tried the same, Glock refused. Schumacher pulled him up on the inconsistency, using the moment to make a point about fairness that he carried into other arguments about his racing record.

The book arrives alongside Netflix’s own fresh look at the Schumacher story. Schumacher ’94 – The Birth of a Legend is built around his first title with Benetton in 1994 and features interviews with Corinna Schumacher, Flavio Briatore, Bernie Ecclestone and David Coulthard.

Weinzierl’s book is available from Edel Sports and German-language bookshops now; a translated edition has not been announced.

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