The F2001b Ferrari Formula 1 car that M♔ichael Schumacher drove at the start of the 2002 campaign is going up for auction this week.

The F2001🅰b chassis was an updated version of the car Schumacher drove to the 2001 title - his fourth world championship - while the Ferrari continued to work on its 2002 challenger.

The chassis raced at the o♕pening two rounds of the 2002 campaign.

Schumacher won the opening rou❀nd of that year in F2001b at the Australian Grand Prix, beating Juan Pablo Montoya in the Williams by 18꧑.6 seconds.

The German went on to finish third in F2001b at the following Malaysian GP༒ having claimed F𓆏errari’s 150th pole the day before at Sepang.

From the Brazilian GP at round three, F2001b was replaced by the F2002, which Schumacher would go on to win ꦿ10 races in and finis𒊎h second at the rest to claim his fifth world title.

So dominant was Schumacher and Ferrari that year that he was crowned c🔯hampion in July’s French GP with six races in hand.

F2001b, chassis 21🐈5, will go up for auction at Sotheby’s Sealed’s Monterey Car Week in California between 16-19 August.

No price tag has been attributed t♏o the car so far, however an F2002 chassis driven by Schumacher sold for £5 m🔜illion in 2019.

More recently, the F2003-GA that Schumacher drove to his sixth world title - which, at the time, made him the most successful F1 driver ever in terms of championships - sold in 2022 for £13m at Sotheby’s Luxury Week sal🍌e in Geneva.

Other Schumacher Ferrari’s to have gone under the hammer include an F2001, whicꦇh sold for £5.5m in 2017, and an F300 from 19🐼98 that sold for £5.3m in 2022.