A Fitting Finale

It might not have ended up as an outrageously improbable triumph against all the odds, and he might have left his final Grand Prix without so much as a minor podium placing to show for his efforts. Yet, for Michael Schumacher, Sunday's Brazilian GP - his 248th GP start - provided a fitting finale to his 16-year F1 career.

Earlier in the season, both Schumacher and eventual champion Fernando Alonso had been confident that the championship battle would come down to the final race at Interlagos. And so it did, but only just.

The earlier unspoken belief was that both drivers would be in a position to forge their own destiny by beating the other in Brazil. Thanks to Schumacher's engine failure at Suzuka, he was no longer in a position to win the championship. Alonso was only in a position to lose it. Even if Schumacher drove the best race of his career, lapping the field twice, Alonso had only to scrape home in eighth place to secure the title.

If Michael Schumacher's fuel pump hadn't malfunctioned in Saturday's final qualifying session, and if he hadn't sustained a left rear puncture early in the race, the Brazilian GP would have been both boring and predictable.

The Ferraris were so much faster than every other car that we would never have seen a thrilling battle among the top runners. Instead, we'd have seen Schumacher and teammate Felipe Massa circulating in formation, way ahead of the chasing pack yet powerless to influence Fernando Alonso's race behind them.

It wouldn't have mattered whether Schumacher or Massa won. For the last race of his career, Michael Schumacher would have cruised around on a Sunday afternoon drive, barely breaking a sweat. It would have been an injustice for a driver who is at his best when facing an impossible challenge.

The formation finish was, alas, a common sight during Schumacher's career, particularly during the cakewalk years of 2001, 2002 and 2004. It was not how he would want to be remembered, nor how his fans would want to remember him.

Instead, Schumacher's technical problems at Interlagos gave us the race situation that the Suzuka failure had seemed to preclude - a genuine racing challenge, with Schumacher going hell for leather on every lap, rather than just getting ahead of Alonso and then praying that the Renault would break.

And what a challenge it was. When he emerged from the pitstop to replace his shredded rear tyre, Schumacher was in sight of being lapped by teammate and race leader Massa, with the rest of the pack not far behind Massa either. Schumacher effectively had 60 laps to make up around 60 seconds on the podium runners.

It was the Hungary 1998-style race situation that is tailor-made for Schumacher's tactical acumen, his powers of focus and concentration, and his ability to reel off a series of qualifying hot-laps under race conditions. His response showed that he has lost little, if any, of his legendary ability.

His lap-by-lap erosion of the deficit wasn't just thrilling for the spectators to watch, it was also causing white knuckles in the cockpits of the fleeing pack up ahead. Almost predictably, Giancarlo Fisichella was a major victim.

Michael Schumacher overtakes Giancarlo Fisichella © Reuters

Despite his vast experience, Fisichella is not the calmest driver under pressure. Although he could not be blamed for the contact that punctured the Ferrari's tyre during Schumacher's first pass on him. At that stage, Schumacher was still looking at relatively easy victory and at least a slight chance of winning the championship. Fisichella presented him with an opening and he was ruthless in taking it.

The ensuing contact, as Fisichella was squeezed by a late-braking Schumacher into Turn 1, was as fleeting as contact can be. A study of the video replay reveals that there were just three frames, a mere eighth of a second, in which there wasn't clear daylight between the Renault's front wing and the Ferrari's rear tyre.

Schumacher admitted afterwards to feeling no contact, and Fisichella's front wing also showed no evidence of the brief brush with the Bridgestone rubber. Yet there is little doubt that it was this contact, rather than any debris from Nico Rosberg's accident, that ruptured the tyre and ended Schumacher's hopes of victory.

That alone could have been enough to pitch the whole race into controversy, acrimonious allegations and the potential for disqualifications, appeals and court cases to mar the end of the season. Thankfully, common sense prevailed. Fisichella might make mistakes, but there is not a malicious bone in his body. Drivers, teams and stewards concluded that it was a racing incident, and left it at that.

The second time Schumacher came up to pass Fisichella, this time on lap 63, there was no need for the hard-charging German to barge through under braking. Instead, the rattled Fisichella left his own braking way too late, went straight on at Turn 1 and handed Schumacher the position. It's the type of pressure mistake that Schumacher, and very few others, are able to induce in rivals.

Not even Kimi Raikkonen, one of the best and most confident wheel-to-wheel dicers in the field, had an answer to Schumacher's speed and aggression. On lap 69, the Finn must have thought that he'd done enough to thwart Schumacher into Turn 1, by pulling over to within a car's width of the inside edge of the circuit. When Schumacher is in that frame of mind, though, a car's width is more than enough. Even on the extremely dusty inside line, he stayed right on it and refused to defer.

For one incredulous moment, it seemed certain that the cars would collide. Yet these are two maestros with superb spatial awareness and judgement. Even with just a sliver of daylight between their wheels, each had the confidence to back his own skills while trusting completely in the other.

The final Ferrari team photo for Michael Schumacher © LAT

It was thrilling stuff, which was cruelly cut short by the chequered flag just three laps later. What the packed stands and the vast international TV audience wouldn't have given for just five more laps, to see Schumacher get in among Jenson Button and Alonso, so tantalizingly close in front of him.

It was not to be, but it was enough. There must have been massed calls for Schumacher to join Massa, Alonso and Button on the podium. Schumacher didn't need a podium appearance, nor did he need an eighth title.

What he needed in his final F1 appearance was to make the world remember what a special talent he was, and what we will be missing when the racing starts again in 2007. On Sunday, he achieved that in spades.

There was no call for sentimental laps of honour or staged farewell celebrations. Schumacher let his driving state the obvious, and then slipped away quietly without fuss or fanfare. Even if it wasn't the perfect result for him, it was a classy and dignified exit. That's the way he would have wanted it.