Michael Schumacher may have had to give way to a resurgent Mika Hakkinen at yesterday's British Grand Prix, but with David Coulthard exiting the race on lap two, second place was enough to further advance the Ferrari number one's seemingly inexorable march to a fourth championship title.

As the cars swept away from the lights, Schumacher looked to be sitting pretty. He held the pole position he had claimed with ease on Saturday, and as the field swept through the first turn Schumacher will surely have smiled at the sight of David Coulthard spinning off track and onto the pit exit road after being hit by Jordan's Jarno Trulli.

Four laps later and he wasn't smiling so much. On a risky one-stop strategy, loaded with fuel and finding his Ferrari nervous and hard to control, uncontrollable Schumacher went wide into Copse Corner and, as he recovered, found Hakkinen beside him as the pair went through Becketts.

Lighter on fuel and for once armed with superior machinery, the Finn swept by.

That was the cue for Hakkinen to storm into a 30-second lead, enough to claw back the time his extra pit stop would cost him and maintain an unlikely grip on the race.

Until yesterday it had been almost a year since Hakkinen had taken the chequered flag first, a 15-race drought stretching back to Belgium 2000, and the Finn's stubborn resistance to of those trying to push him into retirement was looking increasingly less secure.

Yesterday's win though proved the besieged Finn has been defending a solidly fortified position. Six top-three qualifying spots from 11 testify that pace has never been the problem. It is the car that does not fit. Six technical failures testify to that.

"It feels really good after all the troubles of this year," he said afterwards. "Hopefully, there will be more. Before this grand prix we had a very good test, got where we got a good balance for the car and the tyres we're using here really suited my driving style.

"I was able to attack the corners and there was not too much under steer. It gave me the line I wanted which is why I was as fast as I was."

"I wanted to really push hard to make a big gap so that at the finish I could park the car and have a cup of tea before Michael came back."

Hakkinen's belated comeback to the top step of the podium is a small cameo in the increasingly one dimensional story that is Michael Schumacher's assault on a fourth world title and the Formula One record books.

Hakkinen's victory might have prevented the German from claiming Alain Prost's record of 51 grand prix wins, but it will surely cause only the merest hovering of the chroniclers to hover their pens temporarily.

Add to that the ever-widening gap to distance championship rival David Coulthard, and Nigel Mansell's 1992 record of a 52-point gap to his nearest championship challenger looks in danger of tumbling by the time the defending world champion cruises into Japan in October. Schumacher has already matched Mansell's nine wins in a season record with his 2000 season tally, and with six races left this year, betting against Schumacher hitting double figures looks like folly.

Indeed, talk of Coulthard's championship challenge no longer has is ceasing to have any real meaning. The Scot's lap-two exit yesterday, which occasioned a predictable verbal tussle between the two, has effectively killed off the McLaren driver's ever-faltering season.

Despite improving his own performance this year with a series of superb drives - most particularly to win in Brazil and his fight-backs in Spain and Monaco - Coulthard has been undone by his team's crumbling reliability and mechanical deficiency - a lethal cocktail of intractable traction control and outright lack of pace.

McLaren's inability to brew something potent has surely handed Schumacher if not a cruise to the crown in Suzuka, then it will be, at the very least, a less fraught run-in than he had to endure last year, where until Monza, Hakkinen kept the pressure on.

Yesterday, leaning back in his chair after the race and visibly struggling to summon some enthusiasm, the German even hinted that he was bored by recent proceedings.

"Regardless of what happens in the championship, it would be nice to have this guy (Hakkinen) to race against again," he said. "I just hope he doesn't disappear into the distance."

It's an easy sentiment for Schumacher to express. His 65-point advantage over Hakkinen is unbridgeable. His 37 points on Coulthard are a more than comfortable cushion.

Even his younger brother, who retired yesterday with a power loss on lap 37, would need to claim victory in all the remaining races and bank on the champion's car failing to claim the title.

In the most one-sided battle in ten years, what odds on the white flags being raised by Spa?