Coulthard comes out of the shadows

British Grand Prix: Repeat victory for Scot is missed by thousands while Button looks like a veteran to take fifth place

After the most chaotic prelude to any grand prix in the 50-year history of the world championship, Britain's motor racing public - or at least those of them who overcame famine, plague and pestilence to reach Silverstone yesterday - deserved a golden jubilee race full of drama. What they got was a home victory, David Coulthard winning the British Grand Prix in his McLaren-Mercedes for the second year in succession, but also a curiously unemotional contest.

Coulthard had spent the week before the race complaining of feeling unfairly overshadowed by newer faces and more exotic personalities. He was therefore delighted by the opportunity to re-establish his claim to be a genuine challenger for the world championship, although the response to his victory was warm rather than overwhelming.

But this was a grand prix conducted in the modern manner, which is to say as a kind of motorised chess, dependent on strategies planned and executed on computer screens rather than in the heat of hand-to-hand combat. This was hardly the stuff to stir the blood of those who had camped out in the paddy-fields around the circuit, or of those who had abandoned their cars and walked miles to the circuit, all victims of the decision to move the race to the Easter weekend from its traditional date in mid-July.

With a suddenness that came as no surprise to anyone familiar with Silverstone's climate, yesterday morning's early helping of thick fog gave way to a few hours of sunshine just in time for the race itself. An hour after Coulthard took the chequered flag, it was raining again. As the spectators prepared themselves for the unknown perils of the journey home, the circuit's chief executive issued an apology to the thousands of ticket-holders who had been unable to get into the circuit at all, thanks to huge traffic jams in every direction caused by the problems of parking cars in fields reduced to mud-slides.

It was not easy to find someone willing to accept blame for the débâcle. Accusations of a commercially motivated conspiracy were denied by Max Mosley, once the lawyer for Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Constructors' Association and now the president of the FIA, the governing body of international motor sport. Mosley blamed three factors: the late position this year of Ascension Day, which fixes the date of the Monaco Grand Prix; the need to find a date for the new United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis; and the inability of the organisers of the Spanish Grand Prix to provide course marshals on a date adjacent to Spain's round of the international rally championship.

In terms of the effect of the weather, he said, he and Ecclestone were blameless. It was up to the promoters to take precautions. "They know there's 100,000 people coming, they know it can rain." But the choice of the date, over which Silverstone had no control, was the key to the disaster, and there are those who remain unconvinced of the inability of such resourceful characters as Mosley and Ecclestone to work around such arcane factors in the creation of a calendar that would not run the risk of ruining the pleasure of those who had set aside a holiday weekend to participate in the high point of Britain's motor sport year.

At least the result provided a necessary boost to this year's title contest, with Mika Hakkinen, the world champion, finishing in second place in the other McLaren, ahead of the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher, the winner of all three of the season's previous races. Schumacher now leads the driver's standings with 34 points to Coulthard's 14 and Hakkinen's 12 - still a big gap, but not an unbridgeable one, with with 13 races to go. Lying 10th in the championship, with three points, is the 20-year-old Jenson Button, who took fifth place yesterday, behind his team-mate, Ralf Schumacher, after displaying a remarkable degree of maturity in his fourth Formula One race.

The grandstands rose to Button as he crossed the finish line, but the race was otherwise curiously lacking in passion. Coulthard had his own moment of high emotion, but even that turned out to be a bit of a mirage. As pulled alongside Rubens Barrichello at 190mph on the 35th lap, preparing to pass the Brazilian's Ferrari round the outside of Stowe Corner and take the lead on the way to the seventh grand prix victory of his career, he had a sudden vision. He remembered the afternoon, 13 years ago, when Nigel Mansell pulled a similar manoeuvre on Nelson Piquet, bringing the Silverstone crowd to its feet. But whereas Mansell's charge was a genuine bare-knuckle ride, Coulthard was overtaking a car which was suffering from a leak in the hydraulic system, causing the engine to cut out.

Button looked completely at home in the leading group of half a dozen cars, running just behind Hakkinen after overtaking none other than Michael Schumacher into the first corner - "an amazing experience," as he put it afterwards. "Jenson's doing a good job, no question," said Gerhard Berger, the director of BMW's Formula One programme. "The interesting thing is that he doesn't make mistakes. He drives like an experienced driver."

The impression of a close contest between several teams proved to be another illusion, however. As usual, only Ferrari and McLaren were genuinely competing for victory. Having chosen a one-stop strategy, they were initially handicapped by carrying a heavier fuel load than the Jordan and the Williams drivers, who could keep up in the early stages but eventually paid the penalty for needing to stop twice.

The crowd's pleasure in Button's fifth place was a clear indication that Formula One needs bright new characters almost as much as it needs a governing body prepared to place the interests of the paying customers ahead of commercial temptations. As the sun set on Silverstone last night amid a final shower, its rays cast a rainbow in the western sky. Silverstone and its owners, the British Racing Drivers' Club, may have lost millions, but no doubt someone will be counting a pot of gold.