Michael takes a Sunday drive

A little over halfway through the season and Michael Schumacher's crimson tide looks about ready to wash away all resistance.

With an almost routine Sunday drive, Schumacher obliterated the challenge forecast by brother Ralfs theft of pole position on Saturday, sat pretty as David Coulthard, his nearest championship rival, was handed a 10-second penalty for pit lane speeding, and finally trimmed back his pace as the threat of Juan Pablo Montoya winked out in a stuttering buzz of electrical problems, eventually leaving himself a comfortable cruise to the French Grand Prix's chequered flag.

For the defending world champion, defence is becoming an increasingly meaningless word. After losing pole to his brother on Saturday afternoon by a hundredth of a second, it looked briefly like the younger Schumacher might be about to shape the rough-hewn challenge begun with his Canadian victory into a more perfectly formed assault. But that was without figuring Ferrari's strategic grand mastery into the equation.

As Williams set what they thought was the strategic pace, bringing Ralf Schumacher in from the lead on lap 24, Ferrari's Ross Brawn responded in kind by bringing in his charge a lap later and loading the world champion's car with a suspiciously light fuel load.

The feeling was that despite Michael taking. the lead after stop one, Ralf's greater fuel load would allow the Williams man a longer stint and the opportunity to reel in any gap after his older brother's second stop. But as has happened on so many occasions, the second barrel of Ferrari's gun Schumacher's pace - began to fire. As RaIf's times dropped away on heavy fuel and poor tyres, Michael carved out a gap significant enough to hold the lead.

Williams responded by bringing their pilot in earlier than planned to cure the tyre problem. But once again Ferrari responded immediately, the world champion coming in a lap later. Despite a long, 10-second stop, the world champion came out a massive 16 seconds ahead and cruised to his 50th career win, just one shy of Alain Prost's all-time record.

"I really enjoyed this one," said Schumacher. "Winning is always enjoyable and it was definitely fun to- day. Number 50 is a great number, and for the championship it's a big step forward. It was a very exciting race for me.

"I think out strategy worked better than Williams'," said Michael. "My second set of tyres was really, really good. I was absolutely flying. I did have a problem with the third set, they just weren't as fast. But we'll have a look at that.

"It's the perfect result, with my brother in second and Rubens beside me in third. That was a bit unexpected, but he did a great race and it's great for him."

Ralf, though, had a different story. "I had a real problem in the first stop," said the Williams driver.

Barrichello sealed his first podium finish since Monaco with a second piece of inspired strategy. "1 managed to sort out the problems I had in qualifying, which was really horrible for me," said the Brazilian. "The car felt much better this morning. I was doing well in first stint, saving lots of fuel. Ross (Brawn) came on the radio and said 'Would you like to try a three-stop strategy' and I said yes, because it would enable me to go quick all the time through the stints, It was a good call and worked really well."

Barrichello's ride to the podium was not easy, however. The Brazilian was hounded to the chequered flag by McLaren's David Coulthard, who earlier had robbed himself of a possible second place by incurring a 10-second stop-go penalty for speeding in the pit lane during his first stop. The Scot, though, has displayed remarkable fighting spirit through the frustrations of recent races and once again marshalled his strengths for a superb fightback that allowed to him take fourth place.

The Scot's Finnish team-mate Mika Hakkinen, the two times world champion whose season has been little short of disastrous, failed to start after being left stranded on the grid a the start of the pre-race formation lap.

That failure, one of many suffered by McLaren this season, killed off what little hopes he had of being a championship contender since the Finn was left a massive 69 points adrift of Schumacher with only 70 remaining to be won.

Coulthard's travails though have given Schumacher an almost unassailable 31-point lead in the championship. But the McLaren driver was not ready to throw in the towel for the world championship.

"All we can do is wait till the end of the season and then review the situation - it's always feasible that Michael doesn't finish a few races so the championship isn't over yet."

Schumacher was pragmatic about the gap. "Unfortunately, I'm a bit too realistic. We saw last year that by going out two races in a row how quickly things can change," he said, referring to his crashes in Austria and Germany last year. "Still, it's a comfortable lead.

"But there's still seven races to go and 70 points available, anything can happen. As usual, until it's mathematically impossible I'll keep on fighting."

The battle looks increasingly one- sided. With McLaren's charge stalling and Williams hitting peaks and troughs with each successive race, the seven races left in his defence of the title is rapidly taking the shape of a bum-a-fortnight tour.