Frentzen in latest chance to showcase his talents

Prodigal son returns to Sauber as team avoids Massa penalty

According to legend, German racer Heinz-Harald Frentzen learned the smooth driving that has become his trademark when pedalling a hearse for his father, an undertaker in Moenchengladbach. Without it, the coffins tended to slide about. He just smiles when you mention it, but he also once lost a drive in the German F3 when team owner Bertram Schafer saw him opposite, locking a hearse to a halt in the snow outside his factory.

Frentzen, the product of a German father and Spanish mother, is something of a yo-yo in Formula One. Last year he was sacked by Eddie Jordan, for reasons that have yet to become fully clear and probably won't until their legal action finally hits the courts next year. He then bounced back with the now-defunct Prost team. This year he got a ride with the struggling Arrows outfit, helping to move it forward until financial problems forced its withdrawal. Now he is back, ostensibly for this race only, in the Sauber Petronas team for whom he will drive full-time in 2003.

For Frentzen, the return to the Swiss team is a motorsport tale of the prodigal son, for he drove for Peter Sauber's sports car team in the Eighties and early Nineties before an unsuccessful attempt to strike out on his own in the Japanese F3000 series threatened to torpedo his career. Sauber picked him up when he entered F1, running him from 1994 to 1996 when Frentzen moved on for his unsuccessful stint with Williams as Damon Hill's replacement. He remains the highest-scoring driver Sauber has ever employed, and races this weekend as the team's quiet protest against a ludicrous penalty levied on regular driver Felipe Massa. The Brazilian collided with Spanish driver Pedro de la Rosa in the recent Italian GP at Monza. Though De la Rosa had moved ahead by illegally missing the first chicane, Massa was adjudged the guilty party and received a penalty for Indianapolis that would deprive him of 10 grid places. At a time when Sauber Petronas is fighting to beat Renault to fourth place in the constructors' championship, and to hold off Jaguar, it made sense to substitute Frentzen in order to circumnavigate a penalty that most observers regarded as harsh.

There was a time when Frentzen's name used to be mentioned in the same breath as Michael Schumacher's.

In their early days, the cognoscenti would nod sagely and whisper that, lap for lap, Frentzen was quicker. But now Schumacher is a multiple champion breaking all records with Ferrari, while Frentzen is living out the final years of an unfulfilled F1 career.

"It seems to me that people think you are only motivated when you are running up front and winning races. Of course that's a nice feeling, when you are top of the grid and top of the race.

"But I see my job generally as a challenge. I like to work with people, I like to spend my time thinking how to improve the car, how to make it quicker. I take all that very seriously indeed, and that's my motivation in my work."

Frentzen is not your typical F1 racer. Back in 1994, when Ayrton Senna was killed, he was Sir Frank Williams's first choice as replacement but refused to leave Sauber. When he did finally go to Williams, he failed to hit it off with technical director Patrick Head, and after two seasons joined Jordan, winning two races in 1999.

Down at McLaren, Indy Racing League racer Sarah Fisher got her chance to show her paces when she demonstrated Kimi Raikkonen's spare McLaren, making her the first woman to drive a car at a Grand Prix meeting since Giovanna Amati back in 1992.

As Michael Schumacher set the pace, team-mate Rubens Barrichello stepped unhurt from his Ferrari after crashing heavily in the final corner.