Schumacher - did he make or break Formula One? Will he be recalled as one of the great drivers? Justin Hynes has some answers.
There's a stereotypical view of Michael Schumacher as cold, ruthless, imperious and thoroughly devoid of emotion.
It is the face the German has always presented to the world, but on Sunday, as has happened only a few times in his career, Schumacher, bidding farewell to the sport he has dominated for more than a decade found words difficult to come by.
When he did speak it was of his love affair with Ferrari, of the amazing times he has had in Formula One and of the memories he will take with him.
Finally, he smiled and said that his father Rolf, rarely in attendance at races, had spoken to him in the wake of Michael's final race: "My dad was happy to see me after the race and he said: 'Finally, it's over.'"
There are many who will be rejoicing at that fact. The simple mathematics of Schumacher's dominance, 91 wins, 68 poles, seven world titles, have earned the German bouquets and brickbats in equal measure.
He is, it has been said, the man that effectively killed off Formula One as a spectacle during the five seasons of his total dominance of the sport from 2000 to 2004. It has also been said, that his public impassivity was the reason many never warmed to the most successful driver in the history of Formula One.
Those reasons, along with a few signal errors of judgement in his long career, are the ones being cited by observers and some of his peers as the criteria by which Schumacher will be excluded from the pantheon of true greats. He is no Senna. He is not Fangio nor Clark, no Stewart nor Lauda, no Prost.
This is, of course, nonsense.
The rose-tints people don when dreamily citing the legacies of drivers like Fangio, Lauda or Senna, conveniently bypass the worst aspects of their characters, of their careers - that all of them possessed a vicious will to win that would brook no argument and often led them to extremes of behaviour that Schumacher has replicated, and for which he has been castigated.
In mentioning Schumacher's most famous transgressions, his attempt to drive Jacques Villeneuve off circuit at Jerez in a season-decider in 1997, his forcing Rubens Barrichello to slow so he could take victory at the 2001 Austrian Grand Prix and this year's controversy at Monaco, when he appeared to park his car at the Rascasse corner in an attempt to block a potentially pole-winning lap by rival Fernando Alonso, it is conveniently forgotten that Senna attempted to drive Prost off track to win the 1990 world title, that Prost smashed into Senna the season before, that both were sportsmen for whom winning was the only reason to be involved in sport.
In the heat of the moment, they, and legions before them, were capable of seeking what Formula One has always been about - "the unfair advantage".
But were they deeds that should take away from a career more glittering than any before him? Hardly.
From the moment Schumacher stepped into a Jordan 191 at Spa in 1991 there was clearly something special about him.
"When you've never driven a Formula One car before and suddenly you're taking Eau Rouge flat . . . well, I couldn't believe it," Andrea De Cesaris, his team-mate that weekend, recalled recently. "Gary Anderson came to me later and said 'Look, Michael is also taking Blanchimont flat. You have to too.' It was a very tough weekend for me."
Back-to-back championships in 1994/5 gave way to the ultra-discipline, organisational savvy, motivational drive and racing genius of moulding Ferrari from an underperforming icon to a machine capable of winning, in 2000, its first drivers' title since Jody Scheckter in 1979.
There were other factors, Jean Todt, Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne, Paolo Martinelli, but Schumacher had carried half that knowledge base with him from Benetton. Without Schumacher and his ability to inspire loyalty, drive and motivation, Ferrari would have struggled to achieve the dominance they enjoyed in the early years of this century.
Part of that devotion and loyalty comes from winning and Schumacher, more than any other, knew how to win.
The facility of some, in years when Ferrari were technically streets ahead of their opposition will fade, but the ones where the odds were stacked against him rank as classics to match any in the history of the sport.
His first for Ferrari, in 1996 in Spain, in torrential rain, when he dropped to ninth at the start and then eclipsed the nine ahead and carved out a 15 second lead in 15 short, brilliant laps, running 2.2 seconds faster than anyone else.
His win in 1998 in Hungary when Ross Brawn almost jokingly told Schumacher that all he had to do to win was carve out a 25-second lead over 19 laps. Schumacher obliged.
And then there was the monumental battle with Hakkinen in 2000 to finally secure Ferrari a first drivers' title in 21 years. A jaw-dropping contest in which both left the rest of the field for dead, battling over milliseconds for the whole race, with Schumacher finally ascendant.
And even last Sunday's race again proved Schumacher's genius. After starting 10th and rising to sixth a puncture left him at the back of the field. By lap 46 he was sixth again, hunting down Giancarlo Fisichella and eventually climbed to fourth by the chequered flag.
It is instances such as those that should define his legacy.
In the hours before Schumacher started his final race, a bitter Jacques Villeneuve was once again slating Schumacher to the press. He had questioned Schumacher's impact on the sport to F1 Racing magazine in the aftermath of Schumacher's retirement announcement. This time he told Die Welt: "I don't believe that you can judge the greatness or the quality of a sportsman by his achievements alone."
He was right. The issue of Schumacher's insistence on being given preferential treatment over team-mates by Ferrari rankles. And at least two of his championships were achieved in the absence of any real competition. It is true that raw statistics never tell the whole story.
But there is plenty of video evidence to document Schumacher's greatness beyond the mere numbers.
Anyone who ever saw him race can testify to it. He is one of the greats. Flawed, yes, as all the others he will keep company with were, but his genius at the wheel of a racing car should never be disputed.