MOTOR SPORT/San Marino Grand Prix: Last year in Ferrari's backyard of Imola, Michael Schumacher slid and slipped his way to second behind putative champion Fernando Alonso, every dart and thrust repelled by the young Renault star on his way to a third victory of the season.

It was the first small but significant blow in a sequence of debilitating events that would shatter the deep freeze Schumacher had plunged Formula One into over five seasons of championship dominance. As the victories mounted for Alonso, so the appetite for battle ebbed at Ferrari.

But yesterday at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Schumacher restored some pride. The pride of the Ferrari faithful who scratched their heads at Alonso's win last year and perhaps his own pride in his struggling team.

They, and he, delivered a faultless performance, one that was brave and determined, ugly but strangely charming. Outpaced, out-gunned technically on car and tyres by Alonso, Schumacher dug his heels in, refused to give way and ground out a defensive victory of the highest order.

It was one founded on the last record in the books Schumacher had yet to plunder. On Saturday, fuelled lighter than his main rivals, he stole the 66th pole of his career to eclipse Ayrton Senna's total. And in claiming it, Schumacher set himself up for his first real victory since the Japanese GP of October 2004, a disastrous run for a champion so wrapped up in the chequered flag.

A clean start saw him hold his lead, though the safety car was brought out by the time the drivers had reach the turn for the Tosa corner as Midland F1's Christijan Albers was pitched into the gravel traps at the Villeneuve turn after being sent barrel-rolling out by the Super Aguri of Yuji Ide.

The question thereafter was whether Schumacher would be able to hold off the challenge of those behind him. As the Hondas of Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello, who had lined up, light-fuelled and lacking pace, second and third on the grid, faded, and the McLarens of Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya suffered a strangely mediocre afternoon, the Ferrari star was left with just Alonso to fend off.

And in that task he was aided by team-mate Felipe Massa, who provided the bulwark to Alonso's charge, allowing Schumacher to build a lead significant enough to deprive the Spaniard of the chance to use the extra five laps he had been fuelled beyond Schumacher 20th-lap stop to claw back time get out of his own stop ahead of the German.

But in the second stint, Alonso was freed from Massa's shackles and he swooped, lapping a second a lap faster than the Ferrari driver. It still wasn't enough. It appeared that Renault short-fuelled Alonso in his first stop in a bid to give him the pace to pass Schumacher but the former champion made his car as wide as possible on the narrow track and grimly held on through his second stop and the nerve-racking crawl to a crucial win on home soil, ahead of Alonso and McLaren's Montoya.

"We had an amazing weekend," Schumacher admitted. "Obviously at some moments there were some struggles, but generally over the weekend we were very competitive."

But despite the statistics that will go into the record books, the truth is that the win is not likely, barring an amazing upsurge, to be repeated often.

Ferrari still lack pace, as evidenced by Schumacher being outpaced by almost two seconds by Alonso in their best phases yesterday.