I worked for Lewis Hamilton after skydiving with Michael Schumacher – but World Cup winner ‘tore me apart’

Sam Bird has driven some of the fastest cars on earth – but only one of the greatest drivers could convince him to take to the skies.

The Formula E racer was a former Mercedes reserve driver and worked with the likes of Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton.

In addition to both Formula 1 icons being the only two seven-time world champions, the pair also had numerous hobbies outside racing.

Hamilton has an incredible property portfolio, founded a film production company and was co-chair for the 2025 Met Gala.

Schumacher was dubbed an ‘adrenaline junkie’ by his manager Willi Weber, having loved skiing, speed bikes and horseback riding.

The most extreme of which saw the German go skydiving days before F1 races, as he did before the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix.

F3 star Bird, who was Schumacher and teammate Nico Rosberg’s reserve driver, found himself swapping the paddock for a plane.

During an exclusive interview with talkSPORT’s Jon Jackson, Bird revealed: “I landed in Montreal, got to the hotel and my phone rings. It’s Michael.

“So Michael calls and says, ‘Sam, what are you doing tomorrow morning?’ And it was a case of, well, we’re going to the circuit together and we’ve got meetings in the afternoon.

“‘No, no, no, don’t worry about that. We’ll get there in the afternoon.
You’re coming skydiving with me tomorrow morning.’

“Meet first thing, I mean, crack of dawn in the morning. We’re going to go skydiving.

“Now I’ve never done this before, and it’s normally the kind of thing that you book weeks in advance on either a stag do, a fundraiser, or something like that, and you can prepare yourself.

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“So when you go into bed at 11 o’clock at night, and you know that in six hours time you’re going to be waking up to go on a skydive to fall out of a plane at 11,000 feet, but with your hero, you’re not going to say no. I was never going to go, ‘Michael, no, I’m not.’

“Even though I got halfway up, I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is grim, this is horrible’. But I’ve got some great pictures, some great memories.

“We actually completely missed the landing site. We landed like a mile and a half away from where we were supposed to.

“I don’t know why. So then me and Michael were in some field. We’ve got to try and find our way back to the Montreal skydiving site, holding a parachute. Yeah, it was funny. Really funny.”

Remarkably, just hours later, Schumacher was pictured doing an interview with ex-F1 star David Coulthard while walking the track at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

True to form, the 56-year-old was the faster of the two Mercedes drivers in Friday’s first practice session a day later, before finishing just off the podium in fourth – seven positions above teammate Rosberg.

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It was exactly that reputation which meant both Bird and Mercedes had little choice but to play by Schumacher’s rules.

Asked whether any activity would have been too extreme, Bird added: “No, I would have said yes – Yeah, yeah, yeah. Walk on coal, maybe, yep!”

As for Mercedes’ reaction, “He’s a seven-time world champion,” Bird continued.

“He could pretty much say, if I’ve not got anything in the morning, I’ll do what I want. Thank you very much.

“But he always searched for the adrenaline buzz. I mean, look at the way that he pursued actively getting very, very quick on motorbikes.
He obviously loved his skiing. He loved skydiving. There’s so many things that he loved to do that were kind of thrill seeking.”

One of the other sports Schumacher enjoyed was football, something Bird could also bond over outside of F1 that wasn’t skydiving, graciously conceding his idol was better with the ball at his feet.

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Bird was memorably part of a team of FE stars that battled against a Roma Legends XI captained by Francesco Totti in 2019.

Just days ahead of the Rome E-Prix, the Brit lined up alongside Felipe Massa to split a ten-goal thriller following an impressive 5-5 draw.

He told talkSPORT: “I marked him. I had to mark Totti. And when he took, so there was a point in the game where he didn’t really care, and he was just walking around.

“But then there was a point where he turned it on.

“I remember him controlling the ball in his chest, popping it up in the air, watching [Marco] Delvecchio bombing it down the left wing.

“And he’s hit outside of the foot volley, about 50 yards with a curl on it to Delvecchio’s toe…Nah, I’m done. I’m done. Take me off.”

talkSPORT have got exclusive commentary of the Formula E Jakarta E-Prix from 8:30am on Saturday morning