Ex-Red Bull chief Richard Hopkins: Arrogant Schumacher stopped inviting me for coffee, Hamilton has gone to Ferrari to tick a box but will struggle and Daniel Ricciardo could have won Verstappen’s titles but he’s damaged goods now

Richard Hopkins, Head of Operations at Red Bull from 2013 to 2015, told SpaceportSweden he predicts the winner of this weekend’s Melbourne GP will win the championship.

He said success changed “manipulative” Formula One great Michael Schumacher, comparing the transformation to Elon Musk’s rise to power.

Schumacher was a brilliant person but a terrible sportsman, he added.

Hopkins, who worked at Mclaren from 1992 to 2007 as a mechanic and later parts and logistics manager, thinks Williams will be the surprise package this season.

And he believes Ayrton Senna is the GOAT of Formula One, claiming he’d have cost Schumacher some of his titles had he stayed alive.

Hopkins now lives in Australia, where he is the founder and director of P-ONE Technology.

What are you expecting from Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari?

“I don’t necessarily think Lewis Hamilton has gone to Ferrari for the money, he doesn’t need more money. I’m sure he’s being paid at Ferrari what he was being paid at Mercedes, or anywhere else for that matter.

“I think Hamilton has gone there for the Michael Schumacher factor, for one.

“I think he wants to tick the Ferrari box, because every Formula One driver wants to drive for Ferrari. It is Ferrari. Maybe he believes with his experience and seven world championships under his belt, he can be part of a change at Ferrari like Schumacher was back in the day, but I personally think he may struggle with the culture.

“Similar to when Ayrton Senna left McLaren to go to Williams although okay, the car wasn’t working right.

“It’s not home, it’s not what he’s familiar with. A bit like Daniel Ricciardo leaving Red Bull. A lot of athletes, whether it’s football or any sport, there are places and managers they feel comfortable with and perform best at.

“It’s what makes F1 teams successful, it’s having that culture, that family environment where you feel comfortable to perform. I just don’t think it’s going to gel in quite the way he’s hoping it will.”

Do you think he knows that?

“I’m sure Lewis, probably, in the back of his mind has probably got his own doubts anyway. Overriding any doubt is probably confidence in his own ability, technically and other, to make changes at Ferrari in a similar way to how Schumacher did.

“And wouldn’t it be romantic? Winning his eighth championship, one more than Schumacher, at Ferrari, where he had all his success. It’s going to take more than a year for Hamilton to turn around the team.

“It’s going to take at least two or three years, if indeed that’s possible, and I think it won’t take too long for Lewis to realise that actually, maybe it won’t happen. At some point this year he’ll realise it’s not what he thought it was.

“Or maybe he will realise it’s what he thought it was because it’s in the back of his mind already. I haven’t got a crystal ball, maybe it’s a little bit of my experience, maybe it’s a little bit of knowing Lewis, but that’s what I think.

“Alain Prost didn’t fit in at Ferrari, that turned sour, he called that car a truck which probably upset a lot of people at Ferrari. Plus Nigel Mansell didn’t really gel at Ferrari. It’s always been fractious in the modern era.

“It’s an awkward place. You’ve got the whole country of Italy expecting you to perform. There is so much pressure. Hamilton can handle the pressure of course, but it’s whether the team can handle the pressure.

Do you think Hamilton would secretly admit that?

“I think if you took Hamilton for a few beers, he would admit that in the back of his mind he’s going there because it’s ticking that Ferrari box, to say I can retire knowing I’ve driven for Ferrari. The team isn’t winning at the moment, so if it doesn’t win in 2025 and he doesn’t win or finish on podiums, he’s got the perfect excuse to blame the team.

“If he wins, or gets closer to winning a championship it will all be down to him, obviously. So it’s a kind of no-lose situation in some ways. He’s being paid a fortune to tick the Ferrari box, and it’s an open opportunity.

“If it’s a success he can take the credit for it, and if it fails he can blame the team. It’s perfect.”

What was your experience of Michael Schumacher like? 

“Schumacher stopped inviting me for our usual coffee catch-up when he started to get success, which is a bit of a metaphor I suppose. Schumacher was a very success-driven individual. These guys started racing early, in the karting years, and already had success growing up. 

“But it’s very different winning karting races to winning your first big F1 race, then your second and then going toe-to-toe with Senna and Prost.

“Here’s this Schumacher guy, around 1992, only really in his full year of F1. This was after how he got into F1, following Spa in 1991 when Jordan lost out and he started at Benetton where he won a championship. It was meteoric, and that’s only because the guy was so good.

“He was in that top echelon, with Senna, and maybe now we talk about Max Verstappen in that same bracket along with Hamilton.

Did success change Schumacher?

“I think the more success came his way, the more powerful he got. It’s like one of these superhero movies where you have the villain, not that Michael was a villain, who was sapping the energy and getting stronger and stronger because of it.

“He stopped inviting me for coffee in around 1994 or 1995. We used to walk into the circuit together and have a bit of a chat on the way to the paddock. We’d have a little espresso by the trucks and we’d talk about everything other than motoracing, actually. 

“Then I always had to get into the garage. He was a driver and I was a mechanic, so it wasn’t like we were lounging for a couple of hours, we all had stuff to do. Then he moved to Ferrari and then those coffees stopped.

“The more power he got, the more his confidence became arrogance. All successful drivers and people, from business to sport, are like that.

“You’ve only got to look at Elon Musk and Donald Trump, look at where they’re going with their power. It does change people. For some people it doesn’t and for some people it does. 

“But it changed Schumacher. I think that fuelled his need for success and more championships, it drove him on and indeed he won more races and championships.

“So if he didn’t have that character trait maybe he wouldn’t have won all those championships, but he did and he did win those championships. 

“He was a lovely human being outside of the car, to go and have a chat with him or for dinner, an amazing guy. Great human being but within the confines of a race track, put a helmet on his head and he certainly changed. The red mist descended as they.

“He could be manipulative, absolutely. I think we all can, to a degree, as human beings. We read situations and scenarios and we try to play things to our advantage. We learn it in the playground at school, don’t we?

“So certainly the opportunity to go to Ferrari, where he went with Ross Brawn and the other engineers, was a great one because they took all the intel out of Benetton and dumped it onto Ferrari. 

“Obviously Brawn and Schumacher were formidable as a team together. A brilliant engineer and a brilliant driver, put that in any team and then put it in Ferrari who had financial backing. Certainly Schumacher took that opportunity and made it his own.

“For sure, he manipulated situations to be favourable for him. He was a great competitor, but was he a great sportsman? History will show that he wasn’t a great sportsman. He did things in the sport that didn’t tick that sportsmanship box. Damon Hill in 1994 in Adelaide, for example, Villeneuve in 1997 another, and what he did at Monaco where he parked it at Rascasse to stop rivals getting a faster time. 

“That’s not cricket, not how we do it. And the irony is he didn’t have to do that. He was good enough to not do that, but it’s the way he was wired. But that’s putting Schumacher on a pedestal of negativity when other drivers who have come before and after were not angels either.

“Drivers will do whatever it takes to get that advantage, look at Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in the the ‘Multi 21’ incident, where fundamentally Vettel was told to pull over and let Webber take the lead because that was the arrangement they had, and he didn’t let that happen, and nor should he have done. 

“Best to ask for forgiveness afterwards, was his view. That’s the mentality of drivers, win at all costs. They will take situations and put them to their advantage.”

Do you think the winner of the Melbourne GP also wins the championship?

“I think the winner of the Melbourne GP wins the championship because of the way the regulations are now being crafted and how cars are now so reliable. Last year, we had one of the only Grand Prixs where all competitors finished the race.

“In previous years gone by, everyone was there with fingers crossed. You always pursued performance, if you could make the car reliable then fantastic but there was no point turning up with a reliable slow car, you had to turn up with a fast car. So invariably the first race of the year, I’m sure if you had a graph of every year in front of you, you would see the number of competitors finishing Grand Prixs improving as the years went on because reliability has improved as the years have gone on.

“But you turn up with your car and you’ve only got to remember Jackie Stewart’s team in 1999, Johnny Herbert and someone else, they both burst into flames on the grid. Both cars, having gone through all that pain of getting those cars ready with testing and everything else.

“They were flying cars all the way from Milton Keynes to Australia and they both failed at the start of the pit in the first race of the year. That used to be fairly normal, the jeopardy. It was roulette, it was a game of chance.

“That has now largely gone because the regulations have dictated that engines and gearboxes must last a certain distance, a number of races. You very rarely see gearbox and engine failures.

“I remember only five years ago there were the debacles of a five or 10 grid place penalty, and sometimes McClaren had so many engine failures when they were using Honda engines that they finished around 25 miles down the road. So you don’t see that anymore because the penalty is far too severe.

“So we don’t see those failures anymore, the grid is tight but the pecking order remains. So it might only be a 10th of a second between teams, but it’s always pretty much the same. You can predict the top 10. Who gets into Q3 in qualifying, invariably it’s the same race-on-race.

“So if you look at Melbourne this year, 2025, you take the quickest car and you stick it on pole, chances are you’re going to win the race because you have the fastest car. You’re not going to experience any reliability issues because all cars are reliable, pretty much. It’s only going to be an accident or weather that may halt anything.

“If you look at the races last year, the races that were dry and then wet again were the only occasions where there was disruption. Hence why I think if you get pole position in Melbourne, chances are you’ll win that race and you’ll probably win the championship.

“Put it this way, if you’re one of these betting people and you’re in pole position, the odds of that driver winning the championship will go all the way.”

Who would be in your top 5 this season?

“I think the two McLaren drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, will be in the top five. McLaren have done an amazing job. It wasn’t that long ago that Alonso was driving at the Japanese Grand Prix, on the radio down the main straight criticising. That wasn’t that long ago and McLaren really were in trouble.

“Zak Brown has made some really good strategic decisions with that team. He’s employed some really good people, and they have turned it around. That is so difficult to do in F1, it doesn’t happen. You don’t see people come back to the front in a short period of time. 

“We did it at Red Bull which was a bit of a Leicester City story really, it was the team that never should have won, the fizzy drinks company that became the force they are today. But McLaren have obviously been there, they’ve had the highs, they’ve had the lows, they were in quite a deep low with these regulations and they have pulled it out of the bag.

“They have done a great job. They have to do something fairly significant to mess this up. They are at the top now. Norris is a great driver, Piastri is a great driver. They were pushing each other last year, I think they were a bit too friendly with each other and I don’t think we’ll see that happening again this year. They will certainly be in the top five.

“Verstappen will certainly be in the top five, I think George Russell will be in the top five and I think Williams will be knocking on the door. Williams will be the great shake-up. Certainly top 10 Q3 qualifying, it will be exciting.

“I will put Charles Leclerc in the top five too. But I think Hamilton will be on the fringes. I think frustration will start setting in. It will only go one way, he’ll either win the championship and he’ll get his eighth and take all the glory for turning Ferrari around, or it will go completely the other way and he’ll retire before the season ends. I can’t see there being any mediocrity, but we’ll see.”

You know Daniel Ricciardo well. Should he walk away from the sport?

“If you were to Google ‘lost his mojo’, I think an image of Daniel Ricciardo would come up. 

“I don’t think Ricciardo should walk away from the sport, but I do think he should walk away from driving which I think has largely happened anyway.

“Whether the guy is still looking for a drive in Formula One, I think that is probably just his PR team making sure nobody forgets who he is. F1 teams have ambassadors, Prost at Renault and Schumacher at Ferrari. I think Ricciardo would be an amazing ambassador for F1, not for a team in F1.

“Everybody loves him, he’s huge in the states. He made some wrong decisions. He made the wrong decision in leaving Red Bull, he should never have left Red Bull. Of course everybody was excited about Verstappen and that was misinterpreted not by Daniel, but I think by his management team and he was persuaded to make the phone call to Christian Horner. 

“Maybe financially it was a better decision to go to Renault rather than stay at Red Bull. But if he’d have stayed at Red Bull he’d be fighting for championships and maybe those championships Verstappen won, Ricciardo would have won. 

“We spoke earlier about the best drivers I’ve worked with, Senna takes the prize there. Mika Hakkinen was just supremely fast, naturally talented and couldn’t drive slowly. No matter what he did, he had to be quick. I don’t think Ricciardo was ever the quickest driver, but he has supreme race craft.

“He was an amazing driver, but he didn’t have the yellow crash helmet of Senna who would just get behind you. Senna said so himself, if I’m going to overtake you, you either let me overtake you or we’re going to crash. That was the threat he had. That’s similar to what Verstappen has, he gets past people using fear tactics.

“Ricciardo didn’t do that because he’s a guy who got past people with supreme skill and talent, outmanoeuvring people, following a driver for two or three laps and seeing where they were weak before acting on that weakness and his strength.

“He was just a great racer. Do you lose that race craft? No, but you lose confidence, for sure, and he lost confidence in his own ability, knew he’d made some poor decisions along the way and by the time he got to McLaren it was pretty low.

“When you get that low, it’s very difficult to come back out of it. He’s damaged goods now, if you were a team would you want Ricciardo in your team? I don’t think so. Would you get him in on personality? Great, he might attract some great sponsors, but if you want to win races he’s not your driver.

“I love the guy, I’ve got a lot of time for him, he’s an amazing human and he’s an amazing racing driver but unfortunately it just didn’t work out for him. Unfortunately because of the media nowadays, social media, we know about this.

“If you go back to 1980, or 1981, there were many examples of a Ricciardo. But we just didn’t know about them. Murray Walker and James Hunt would only talk about the guys in the top three, they had no idea who else was in the race, who was winning and losing, because technology didn’t allow it.

“Social media didn’t hype up anyone who wasn’t doing well, they were just forgotten. But of course nowadays with Ricciardo, it’s all on social media.”

Marc Surer said that had Senna not died, Schumacher would have won less than seven. Do you agree?

“I agree with Marc Surer, I think Schumacher would have one less title had he stayed alive. Senna left McLaren, went to Williams, so wouldn’t have won the championship in 1994. It’s fairly common knowledge that Senna, even after three races, was questioning his decision of moving from McLaren to Williams.

“Would he have gone back to McLaren? If he had, he probably wouldn’t have won a championship for a few years until McLaren became good again in 97, 98 and 99.  But if Senna was at McLaren, would it have worked? It’s ifs, buts and maybes. 

“But a talent like that would not have languished and not won championships. So yes. Would he have won as many championships as Schumacher did, or would he have just taken championships away from him? Senna had won three, so maybe he’d have won another couple, which would have put him onto five. 

“And maybe those two that he would have won, would have been two that Schumacher wouldn’t have won, so maybe they would have both been on five and Hamilton would be on seven, clear in the distance for championship wins.”