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Michael Schumacher admits his F1 career unlikely to finish memorably

Retiring former champion suffered eighth retirement of 2012 in India

Michael Schumacher has conceded his Formula 1 career is unlikely to end on a high note after he suffered another dispiriting race, and ultimate eighth retirement of the season, in India.

Schumacher's season, particularly when Mercedes were more competitive in the opening months of the campaign, has been hampered by incidents and poor reliability and his eight retirements this year now represent the most he has ever suffered in a single season since first entering F1 in 1991. The 91-time GP winner, who once enjoyed a 58-race sequence without a mechanical retirement when at Ferrari, admitted that failing to make the chequered flag on such a regular basis was an usual experience for him. "It's not a very good statistic quite honestly," Schumacher acknowledged. "It's 17 races, or 16, we have done by now, eight retirements, so 50% retirement [rate]. Well, that's not a statistic I'm used to. Certainly not. "But obviously we retired the car for precaution reasons but it was all done by the first corner."