Schumacher stalled by rare Ferrari breakdown

Forget all the ideas currently being mooted to enhance Formula One, such as adding a weight handicap on successful teams. As practice in Suzuka yesterday suggested, there is a far easier way to make things more exciting: just give Michael Schumacher a few hydraulic problems every so often. It works wonders.

As the world champion's Ferrari was sidelined yesterday afternoon, the battle for supremacy was being waged between the McLaren Mercedes of Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari, and the BMW Williamses of Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher.

The McLarens ultimately held sway by more than a second, but nobody was getting too worked up. Friday is notoriously a day on which different teams run different strategies. The world champion might have been out of it yesterday, but he remains the yardstick by which the others are judged. The Japanese circuit, arguably now the most challenging track on the calendar, also suits him and his car perfectly.

Schumacher admitted that he was slightly surprised to see that his Michelin rivals were closer than he had expected on Bridgestone's home ground, but he was hardly fretting. Similarly, he exhibited a totally pragmatic approach to criticism that Ferrari's rampant superiority has brought Formula One close to the brink of marketing disaster. "I'm not here to make the racing interesting," Schumacher retorted, "I'm here to win.

"F1 always regulates itself," he added. "The technical rules keep changing to slow the cars down but the teams and engineers always find ways to improve. It's all part of the show."

Coulthard, who was half a second slower than team-mate Raikkonen, concurred: "I don't think putting in ballast and trying to handicap those who have done a better job to improve the show, and to build better cars, is right. I think it goes against what Formula One stands for, which is a set of regulations so framed that the people with the cleverest minds and the best budgets do the best job."

Off-track politics hold no interest at all for Raikkonen, who is still hunting for his maiden Grand Prix win after a late-race error in France in July postponed the success that many believe is inevitable. "Suzuka is a tricky circuit and you don't have very large run-off areas," observed the Finn. "If you lose control you are almost bound to damage the car."

Montoya discovered that to his cost when he crashed his BMW Williams with minutes to go. "I went on the throttle like always and I thought I was going to make the corner fine, but instead I went over the sharp part of the kerb and lost the car," the Colombian explained. "The impact was hard and I am still a bit sore."