In one of the most remarkable sporting comebacks of recent times, seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher will race in the 2010 Formula One world championship, three years after retiring from the sport. First published in 2006, following his retirement, this is the story of how Schumacher got where he is today.

The German, who will be 41 when the new season begins in March, has signed a contract worth €7 million to drive for the Mercedes GP team. Confirmation of his return came after months of increasingly frenzied speculation and marks the resumption of a remarkable career.

There is a general belief that to succeed in motor racing today a driver must have well-heeled parents. But Schumacher was an exception. In fact, when he started out some, his outlook couldn't have been worse as his family was almost below the breadline. Luckily his father, Rolf, was good with his hands and mechanically astute. It saved his day.

The only car Rolf Schumacher could ever afford to buy his son relied on pedals for its propulsion. Like many young boys, Michael Schumacher, as a three-year-old, had a pedal go-kart. And there it might have ended had his father Rolf not been a bit of a tinkerer. More for his own amusement than anything else, he found an old scooter two-stroke engine and installed it into his son's pedal go-kart. He remembers: "That's the way it started."

His son drove the crude and rather noisy go-kart in the local park, until he was ejected by the park-keeper. Then, much to the annoyance of the local residents, he took to the street pavements, before crashing the kart into a lamppost after failing to negotiate one of the innumerable pavement obstacles. Then the looming imminent formation of a neighbours' lynch mob prompted his father to enrol him at the local karting track 10 kilometres away from the family home in Kerpen, west of Cologne.He became the club's youngest member, at five years old. Rolf scouted around and from old worn out parts he found at the club rubbish tip discarded by members he built Michael a kart fitted with a 100cc engine that he lovingly rebuilt. Even the tyres were acquired from the rubbish pile. But it was enough, and by age six Michael was club champion and beating all his rivals even with their proper new karts.

To take the next step, however, Schumacher needed 880 deutschemarks for a new engine, and this was not an option as Rolf barely had enough to feed his family. 

But thanks to the buzz the young Schumacher had created at the Kerpen club, he found a sponsor in the shape of a carpet shop owner called Gerd Noack. Noack paid for the engine, but that was his limit. Fortunately, soon a richer sponsor came along, in the shape of fruit machine operator Jurgen Dilk.

Dilk was Michael Schumacher's fairy godmother. He paid for Schumacher's karting career for 10 years until he was 17 and left school. The sponsorship included new equipment. In return Dilk wanted to own Schumacher's trophies. Schumacher told him: "That's fine for me – I can drive and you get the trophies." Dilk also signed the young man up on a contract and became his de facto manager.

Dilk and Schumacher became extremely close travelling across Europe together to kart races. Dilk told Schumacher biographer, Tim Collings, about the day he found out his young driver was very special: "One day, in the German championship for juniors, Michael was leading, when, on the second lap he knew that he had a problem. He put his hand back onto the engine, where he felt he had a carburettor problem. He left his hand there for 18 laps, driving with one hand on the wheel, and he won the race. Afterwards, he told me what was wrong. Apparently there were two small screws loose on the fixing of the carburettor. It showed what a great feeling he had for engines." They were 10 extremely happy years, which probably cost Dilk US$100,000. But there were plenty of trophies, a collection today that would probably fetch US$2 million if he were to sell it.

Schumacher's 10 years with Dilk were hugely successful. He was German junior champion in 1984, at the age of 15, repeating the feat the following year, when he was also runner-up in the world championship.  In 1986, aged 17, he was third in the German senior karting series and third also in the European series. In his last year of karting in 1987, aged 18, he was the German and European champion. But like so many future champions, he never landed the karting world championship.

When Schumacher turned 17, reality dawned and he decided to train to be a mechanic. His ambition then was to become a ‘professional' karting driver. He certainly had no inclination or desire to go to university and he became an apprentice at the local garage. Schumacher said: "The only thing I really concentrated on was go-karting." The mechanic's training was calculated in that ambition. He explains: "I was planning and preparing."

But his prized apprenticeship turned out to be mostly washing customers' cars – until Schumacher characteristically laid down his own rules, as he told Tim Collings: "I stood up and said ‘hey, guys, I'm not here to learn to wash cars. I'm here to learn to repair cars' and they said okay and I started to repair cars."

But by the time he was 19, he was too old for karting and in 1988 a move to cars was inevitable. When car racing became the only way forward, Dilk stepped in again buying him a Formula Ford drive for US$20,000 for 10 races and a few races in the German Formula Koenig championship. He was runner-up in the European Formula Ford 1600 series and sixth in the German series. In 1989 Dilk bought him a proper drive in the Koenig championship, but he was destined not to need it. He had been spotted by people with the contacts and the means to back him.

During 1988, Domingos Piedade, a racing enthusiast and a director of AMG, the Mercedes tuning company, spotted Schumacher in Formula Koenig. Piedade was a talent-spotter in his spare time and had been the first to recognise Ayrton Senna's ability. He was similarly convinced that Schumacher was the real thing. Piedade also had an advantage in that his two sons were racing in German karting and they told their father just how good Schumacher was.

Piedade telephoned Gerd Kramer who ran the Mercedes competitions department. Kramer organised a test for Schumacher with a Formula Three team run by Willi Weber called WTS. Weber's team had just won the 1988 German championship with Jo Winkelhock driving and needed a new driver. The test could not have gone any better, as Schumacher immediately lapped one-and-a-half seconds faster than Winkelhock in the same car. Piedale told Weber: "He is the one you want." Weber was convinced anyway and said: "Everything he did on the track was superior, playful and easy for him. I had to offer him that chance."