For All Intents and Purposes

It was perhaps too much to ask that Formula One's most controversial figure, Michael Schumacher, would spend the final few years of his career under the sport's ethical radar and out of the controversy spotlight.

For three years following the team orders debacle at Austria 2002, Schumacher had raced cleanly and largely without any black marks against his name. Monaco 2006 marked a return to the bad old days of 1994 and Jerez 1997.

The key plot points in the incident have all been analysed and dissected repeatedly since Saturday - Schumacher's loss of control and subsequent stall at Rascasse during qualifying, the outpourings of derision from former world champions, rival teams and commentators alike, the tweezers-lipped 'no comment... and that tells you what I think' grumblings from championship leader Fernando Alonso, and Schumacher's and Ferrari's furious refuting of the allegations against them.

At the heart of the issue sat the three race stewards tasked with the unenviable job not of deciding whether Schumacher had erred (because he clearly had), but whether his mistake was deliberate or not. Article 116b of the Sporting Regulations defined the criteria for the stewards' enquiry:

"If, in the opinion of the stewards, a driver deliberately stops on the circuit or impedes another driver in any way during the qualifying practice session his times will be cancelled."

It was that one word - 'deliberate' - that caused the controversy and resulted in the stewards' enquiry taking a full eight hours to reach their eventual 'guilty' verdict. In light of the cynicism displayed by the top teams and (occasionally) drivers in the modern era, one has to wonder why the FIA puts their stewards in the precarious position of having to prove the unprovable - what exactly is going through a driver's mind in the cockpit.

Schumacher correctly pointed out that only he knows exactly what happened in the Ferrari cockpit at Rascasse. If that is the case, one must then wonder how Schumacher presumed to know what was going through David Coulthard's mind when the pair collided infamously in the wet at Spa-Francorchamps in 1998. In either case, the stewards could only look at the video footage of the event, correlate it with drivers' statements and telemetry from the car(s), and make a judgement call based on that material evidence.

However, there is no telemetry for intent. Ultimately, it must boil down to facets borrowed from criminal law - placing the suspect at the scene, determining motive, means and opportunity, and using those to decide on the probability of guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Using those criteria, Ferrari's defence of their star driver is shaky.

Schumacher had every motive to park the car where he did. Having blown his final qualifying attempt with a poor second sector time, he would have been powerless to prevent Renault's Fernando Alonso, Williams' Mark Webber and possibly others from beating his provisional pole time and ousting him from the grid slot that every Monaco competitor covets.

He certainly had the means too. Any F1 driver has the skills to spin and slide the car at will, and to make it look like an accident. Schumacher himself pulled this off during a Silverstone pre-qualifying session a couple of years ago to increase his chances of getting a dry track for his final qualifying run.

Opportunity is the last of the three factors, and Schumacher was again in prime position. Running first among the leading drivers, and with not enough time for those behind him to put in another hotlap attempt, any yellow flag situation precipitated by Schumacher would hold for the rest of the session.

Those factors would have been enough to swing the verdict towards 'guilty', but for the final piece of the puzzle - the need for the stewards to prove that he had the intent to lose control and stall the car.

They eventually rationalised their decision via a complex analysis of steering wheel movements, braking pressures and other technical data. In the hyper-cynical world of modern F1, where teams read the rules once to understand them and a second time to find out how to circumvent them, is such an approach still viable in F1?

The rule-makers in the equally field of professional golf have sidestepped such controversy by taking intent out of the equation. During the 1980s, a tournament three-ball were playing an event on the PGA tour.

One of the three drove his ball into a hazard and, while approaching his ball, he entered the hazard, absent-mindedly plucked a long stalk of grass from the ground and began chewing on it. He was awoken from his mental slumber by his two playing partners looking at him incredulously and asking, "You do realise what you've just done, don't you?"

He had tampered with the vegetation in a hazard, an act forbidden to prevent players from improving the lie of their ball. There was never any suggestion that he had intended to cheat. The grass stalk that he'd plucked was several yards away from his ball, so removing it had advantaged him in no way at all. Yet the rules are clear, and he had no choice but to accept the penalty.

The Ferrari of Michael Schumacher is pushed into parc ferme after qualifying © LAT

Whether or not Michael Schumacher's stall at Rascasse was deliberate, it's clear that Schumacher benefited from it, while some of his rivals were disadvantaged. Failing to punish Schumacher, under the guise that intent was impossible to prove, would extend an open invitation to all drivers and teams to emulate his actions at future GPs.

It's a 'slippery slope' argument that, on some issues, would be weak and alarmist. But, in modern F1's case, the slippery slope is a proven and predictable phenomenon. If one team finds a loophole in the regulations, it's not a case of whether their rivals will also exploit that loophole, but how long it will take them to do so.

Applying the rule as inflexibly as golf's rules, and cancelling the times of any driver who causes a yellow flag situation by spinning and blocking following cars, may seem harsh. Yet, even within F1, there is precedent for it.

The irony is that, if Schumacher had make his Rascasse mistake last year at Monaco, he'd have started from the back of the grid anyway - with no official enquiry, no outrage from drivers, commentators and fans, no heated denials or pleas of innocence from Ferrari. Under the single lap qualifying system, if a driver blew his hotlap and stalled, he recorded no time and was sent to the back of the grid, end of story. Intent was not a factor.

The single lap qualifying system wasn't ditched because it was unfair or too harsh. These are the best drivers in the world, asking them to complete one hotlap without spinning or stalling was not unreasonable. The drivers adapted to it and, most of the time, were able to complete highly competitive laps without incident.

The second precedent is that of the start procedure. A driver who stalls his car gets sent to the back of the grid, a rule that bit Schumacher particularly harshly at Suzuka 1998. Again, the stewards do not need to prove intent.

Quite the contrary, many drivers have stalled on the grid while trying their utmost to keep the engine running. Yet they all know the rules - stalling on the grid, whether intentional or not, means starting from the back of the field. There are no appeals, no claims of injured innocence and no allegations of 'official bias'. The teams know the rule, accept it and adapt to it.

If the same inflexible rule, independent of intent or the need to prove it, was applied to drivers who caused yellow flag conditions during qualifying, the drivers and teams would adapt to it with equal ease. Just as the world's top golfers have adapted to the uniquely rigorous rules of their profession. In both cases, it's the price for competing at the highest level.

The second aspect of Saturday's controversy was the penalty viewed from Schumacher's and Ferrari's standpoint. Michael Schumacher is not just an exceptionally gifted driver. He is not just the holder of all the significant measurable records in modern F1. He is, in every sense of the word, a legend.

Legends have greater expectations placed upon them than mere gifted drivers or record holders. They are expected to be the complete package, on and off the circuit.

In many respects, Schumacher meets or exceeds these expectations. The stability of his clean-living lifestyle, his exemplary work ethic, his loyalty to Ferrari, his acute tactical skills, his ability to concentrate for lengthy periods, to drive around problems with the car or provide calm radio feedback to Ross Brawn while on the limit, his work in F1 safety, his donations to charities and disaster relief efforts - all of these are in keeping with a legendary figure and role model.

Yet these qualities are partly and tragically nullified by his (and Ferrari's) historical tendency to make the wrong decisions, place the car in the wrong position on the track, and invite suspicion about their motives and ethics.

Michael Schumacher steps out of his Ferrari after clashing with Jacques Villeneuve in the 1997 European Grand Prix at Jerez © LAT

The truly damning aspect is that there is no external party to blame. Nobody forced Schumacher and Ferrari to run into Jacques Villeneuve's Williams at Jerez 1997, nor to implement team orders at Austria 2002, nor to contrive such a ridiculous finish to the US Grand Prix later that year, nor to put his car in a position to handicap his rivals at Rascasse on Saturday. These were all autonomous decisions and events that happened needlessly and without outside interference.

They are isolated events in a long and distinguished career. However, it's often the isolated events that stick in the memory. Mike Tyson was, for the greater part of his career, one of the most awe-inspiring boxers in history. Yet he'll be remembered for one moment of weakness, a split-second but nevertheless autonomous decision to tackle his opponent with his teeth rather than his fists.

Even giving Schumacher the benefit of the doubt and allowing that his Ferrari wasn't fully controllable at just 16km/h, Saturday's incident was just another in a series of events that have tainted his image in the public's opinion. Individually, these events are not image-breakers. As a body of evidence, they become impossible to ignore. There comes a point where telemetry and technical explanations cease to matter, where sheer force of habit becomes the dominant factor in shaping opinion.

Nobody expects Schumacher to drive flawlessly, never making mistakes. However, it would be appropriate (particularly at this stage of his career) if Schumacher could exert the control to avoid making mistakes at times and places that immediately suggest dubious ethics. The only metaphorical hole in his legacy cannot be plugged by yet more silverware.

Schumacher may blame his plight on 'enemies' in the paddock. The truth is that he didn't enter F1 as a marked man. Instead, he was given the same blank sheet as all other new F1 drivers. Fifteen years later, if a large percentage of the sport's followers have ended up admiring his skills and records while rejecting his ethics and sportsmanship, Schumacher must accept that it's his own doing, not his enemies'.

Even if Schumacher decides to extend his F1 career beyond 2006, he is running out of opportunities to turn the tide.