'Boy Wonder' presented with winner's trophy

Race winner Eddie Irvine branded him 'Boy Wonder' and said he would give his winner's trophy to the Finn because he was the real winner.

The Finn, who crashed out of his debut race last weekend in Austria, went right to the other end of the scale in Hockenheim,

And he surely earned himself a place in one of the top teams next year with a performance which would have earned him victory but for team orders to let Irvine through.

He set the foundation for his triumph when he qualified fourth on the grid - ahead of Irvine - and then blistered into second place off the start line.

He held off a hard charge from Coulthard in the early stages and took the lead when Mika Hakkinen's pit stop went wrong.

Down the back straight of the following lap he eased off the throttle to let his team leader through when ordered to do so over the radio.

'When I saw 'P1' on my pit board I could not believe it. My car ran perfectly and I had no problems.

'I did not feel it when Coulthard hit me but I was glad that he was gone so that I could concentrate on catching Mika.

'I did think about pulling out the radio cable and pretending I couldn't hear them when the call came through for me to move over,' joked Salo.

'Actually at one stage I was about to get on the team radio and tell them to ask Eddie to speed up because he was going too slow and Heinz-Harald Frentzen was catching me.

'After two races I am looking forward to going back to the factory and doing some testing and getting to know the car even better.

'Michael Schumacher told me to just drive the car and it would do the rest and he was right.

'Its great this is the best result of my career.'