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Before he became a Formula E legend, NEOM McLaren Formula E Team’s Sam Bird served as a Test Driver for one of Formula 1’s top teams, working alongside a motorsport icon.

Amid a stellar GP2 campaign in 2010, Sam joined up with Mercedes – and he’d end up being part of the team for four years.

“I was driving really well,” Sam says of his 2010 season. “I became known for late overtaking moves, being able to carve through the field, and being quick.

“I was friendly with Ron Meadows at Mercedes and had a really good race in Barcelona, and had I not had to do a front wing change because of a front wing collapse in the opening stint of the race, I think we would've won it - or certainly been right up there. The pace was mega, and he said, "Right, we'll stay in touch."

The two did stay in touch, and following a maiden victory in the Feature Race at Monza, Sam got a call that would lead to him getting behind the wheel of a Mercedes for the first time.

“I got told, ‘you're going to be doing the Young Driver Rookie Test, the two days in Abu Dhabi. We'll be looking after you. You'll have some sim days prior to that. Get yourself ready, get yourself fit’,” Sam recalls. “I did a decent test, everything that was asked of me, and spent the next four years with Mercedes, going to most of the races and doing a lot of the sim work.”

The opportunity was special for two reasons. Not only was he joining up with a top team, but he would also be working alongside one of his heroes. Coinciding with Mercedes’ return to F1 in 2010, seven-time champion Michael Schumacher was making a comeback of his own, aiming to lead the German brand to the same level of greatness he’d become synonymous with.

“I knew at that point that I would be rubbing shoulders with my childhood hero, Michael Schumacher,” Sam says. “To be able to see how he and Nico Rosberg worked and what they were like in debriefs, how they went into so much detail, how the debriefs were constructed, and their approach to language and calmness on the radio, was pretty cool.”

Far from having stars in his eyes, young Sam took the opportunity of working with Schumacher to learn from him, to see how he worked and how he set himself apart – not just from everyone else, but his own team-mate.

“Those two were very different,” Sam says, comparing Schumacher to Nico Rosberg. “Nico was very mathematical and highly intelligent with regards to knowing about the car underneath him.

“Michael had an incredible ability to remember every lap that he did and the feeling of the car and being able to translate that to the engineers.”

Sam had driven an F1 car before, with Williams in 2007, so the leap from GP2 to F1 wasn’t entirely alien to him, but he still needed to prepare and learn the nuances of the Mercedes car.

“I knew the speed of a Formula 1 car, but the Mercedes car had a very different steering wheel layout, so I had to learn that – as well as things like where their brake bias adjusts were,” Sam says.

“We ticked all the boxes there, and I did feel like the preparation really paid off. I felt completely at home with what I was expected to do.”

The test went well, if a bit “quick”, according to Sam, but it wasn’t a one-and-done deal. He’d done enough to earn a rolling contract that would keep him at the team until the end of 2013, just before his lengthy Formula E career began.

Over the years, Sam tested a number of times for Mercedes, and over that time, the team truly adopted him as one of their own.

“At the beginning, you just want to knuckle down, be super professional, and then as time progresses, you become more and more friendly with the engineers,” he says. “They started playing pranks on me. It was quite good fun.

“The funniest one was in Montreal. They would always get me to take VIPs around the garage, show them the cars, talk about the cars, talk about the different kinds of areas within the garage, and I'd left my sunglasses that had rubber nose bits on an engineer's desk.

“They'd very kindly used a pen to draw on top of the rubber, and it was quite a hot sweaty day. I'd then put the glasses back on again while outside. Then doing the garage tour, I took them off. I couldn't understand why everybody was smiling and laughing, and I thought I was doing a good tour, but it turned out that I had massive panda eyes.”

Schumacher and Sam became friends, with the German driver taking Sam under his wing. The two would share experiences away from the briefing room and the pressure of the race track.

“The best relationship I had was with Michael,” Sam remembers fondly. “I never let on to him that he was my childhood hero, or that I was completely in awe of him as a person. Because I treated him like a normal guy and just as a mate, I think he really respected that.

“We got on like a house on fire. One day, he invited me skydiving. He called me and asked, ‘What are you doing tomorrow morning?’ And I was like, "Well, we're going to the track, aren't we, in the morning?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, we don't need to be there until one o'clock… you're coming skydiving with me. I'll see you at breakfast at six.’

“I’d never been skydiving before, and normally you have time to prepare - you've booked it weeks or months in advance, but no, I had 12 hours to prepare my brain that I'm going to be 11,000 feet in the air. But I loved it.

 

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“I think he respected that I gave as good as I got in that respect. A class act, a good, fun guy.”

And that respect enabled Sam to exert some influence in the race prep. He remembers a time where Schumacher and Rosberg's approach to the final chicane in Montreal differed, and Schumacher couldn't understand how his team-mate was able to carry more speed through there. A quick intervention from Sam soon resolved the issue.

“After the meeting, I said to his engineer, ‘Have you not shown him the onboard?’ And the answer was no. I said, ‘Well, we've got to show him the onboard. It's clear to me why Nico's so much quicker’,” Sam says. “They then took some screenshots of him and Nico in comparison, and Michael looked at them. Next session – bam, he was just as quick as Nico.

“He was able to absorb information really quickly and learn. And this is a seven-time world champion, he still was willing to learn and take on board information, valuable information, to make him go quicker.”

Fast-forward to the present day, and Sam is not only one of Formula E’s longest-serving drivers but one of its most successful. Only two drivers have entered more events, while he's one victory off the record for the number of race wins, and one Fastest Lap off that all-time record as well.

Maintaining that longevity is another thing garnered from his time spent with Schumacher. The German raced for Mercedes in his early 40s, which was unusual back then, but the way he handled himself has become something of a blueprint for the modern driver.

“In this modern day and age, fitness and diet are very key elements of being a sportsman,” Sam says. “You look back at the '80s, '90s, not so much, but now everybody's taking fitness and nutrition extremely seriously.

“There's also the hunger and desire to continue to improve and get better and score more wins. That's always a focus and a goal of mine. I'm not content and happy with what I've done so far in my career; I want to do more, do better. I've got one win for NEOM McLaren, I'd like more.”

Off-track, Schumacher taught Sam how to work better with his team. Sam explains “I still use those learnings from the meetings at Mercedes, especially in how to conduct a proper meeting, what to tell your engineers and what kind of language they are looking for. But also the professional outlook and how they dealt with the media.”

Schumacher in his latter years was also a different man with the media, another thing that has informed Sam’s approach since.

“Maybe Michael had changed a little bit from when he was at Ferrari. I think in the '90s he was very firm, very focused, and then when he came to Mercedes, I think you saw more of himself in interviews,” he says. “That really resonated with me. Be yourself, say the right things, but say it in your own way. It's important to get across who I am, as well as get the right message across, not just being this robot.”

Today, there’s something of a parallel between Sam and Schumacher’s relationship, and that of Sam and his NEOM McLaren team-mate Taylor Barnard, Sam now serving as the experienced hand to the FE rookie. Meaning, Sam’s experiences from those days with Mercedes are still being put to good use today.

“There are still things that I can showcase to Taylor, but he's a great young guy. He's extremely quick, very good with the engineers. And with regards to media, maybe he’s not quite the finished article, but he's 20. He's just starting out, and he will learn and improve with time.”