A MICHAEL Schumacher Formula 1 World Championship-winning Ferrari has sold for a record price at auction.
F2003-GA chassis 229 went under the hammer in Switzerland on Wednesday as part of Sotheby’s Luxury Week.
The car was one of two F2003-GA chassis raced by Schumacher during the 2003 season but the only one he drove to victory, claiming wins in the Spanish, Austrian, Canadian, Italian and United States Grands Prix, and was the car he drove to clinch the title in the season-ending Japanese GP.
Pre-auction estimates set its expected price between 7.5 to 9.5 million Swiss Francs (AU$11.71 to 14.83 million), but the sale far surpassed those figures.
Chassis 229 sold for a whopping 14.63 million CHF (US$14.87m, AU$23.1m).
That is the highest sale price for any modern F1 car at auction, surpassing the previous record – also held by one of Schumacher’s Ferraris.
Ferrari F2001 chassis 211 – the car Schumacher drove to victory in the 2001 Monaco GP, his fifth and final win in the principality – sold for US$7.504m (AU$9.89m) at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York in November 2017.
Earlier this year, ex-Schumacher F300 chassis 187, which earnt four wins from four starts in the 1998 season, netted US$6.22m (AU$9.05m) at RM Sotheby’s annual Monterrey auction.
While F2003-GA chassis 229 now holds the record for modern F1 cars, it still falls slightly short of the all-time auction sale record for a F1 car.
Mercedes-Benz W196 chassis 00006/54, driven to victory by Juan Manuel Fangio in the German and Swiss GPs of 1954, sold for an eye-watering US$29,265,095 (AU$32.04m) at Bonhams Goodwood auction in 2013.
