MOTOR SPORT/Formula One: As Formula One lurches from crisis to crisis, yesterday Takuma Sato proved that fairy stories still do come true. The Japanese driver came home fifth in his first outing at his home grand prix to earn his first points of the season and save his team's blushes by pushing Jordan from eighth to sixth in the final standings of the constructors' championship.
Sato's arrival at Jordan was announced at this race last year on the back of a furiously successful season in British Formula Three.
In the following months, Sato's dream turned to nightmare after he suffered non-finish after non-finish, was involved in potentially lethal accidents and drove himself and his car harder than he needed.
Yesterday, though, the relentless positivity, the unfailing willingness to learn, paid off as he nursed his Honda engine to finish fifth in front of a delirious home crowd, the only Honda-powered car to finish the race.
Two points that prove wrong those who said he couldn't finish a race; that demonstrate that the skills that allowed him to dominate in F3 haven't evaporated; that rescue the team that will more than likely shunt him back to BAR.
Sato is such a polite, optimistic figure that the metaphor wouldn't occur to him, but those of us of a more cynical nature were happy to regard those two points as a pair of fingers raised at those within Formula One, Jordan and the wider world who lost faith in him.
Clambering out of the car, he sprinted through parc ferme and virtually assaulted a shocked Eddie Jordan, so furious was his need to celebrate with a boss who has always stood by his young charge. His own crew swarmed over the diminutive driver and revelled in the salvation those points bring.
Sato began the race an excellent seventh, after posting a last-ditch flying lap in qualifying on Saturday, and held the position after the start. When David Coulthard pulled out of the race, Sato moved to sixth and the chance of a point.
By lap 14, however, he was being chased down by the twin Renaults of Jarno Trulli and Jenson Button, both lightly loaded with fuel to allow them to push hard in the first stint. Both Renaults came in a lap apart, starting on 15, and despite several flying laps designed by Jordan to give Sato a gap he could protect through his own first stop, the Japanese driver was eclipsed when he came in on lap 21.
There was no surrender though and in the second stop on lap 36, Sato's crew got him in and out in just 8.1 seconds, enough to put him ahead of Button who had pitted two laps earlier. Trulli, the main threat, had retired on his pit stop on lap 32, electronic problems gifting Sato a hold on sixth.
When Ralf Schumcacher's engine blew on lap 49, the Jordan driver was bouyed to fifth. A sequence of crunch laps followed as voices over the radio told him to throttle back and nurse his uprated Honda powerplant, a unit which had already blown in the cars of team-mate Fisichella and BAR's Jacques Villenueve.
"It was like Spa '98," said a Jordan insider. "Just sitting there willing him on, hoping that the engine would hold."
The leading four cars, winner Michael Schumacher, second-placed Barrichello, McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya, had taken the chequered flag to traditionally polite and reserved Japanese applause but when the yellow Jordan came through the final triangle chicane and round turn 18, the reserve was shed and Suzuka became a furious cauldron of noise as 100,000 Japanese celebrated. It was the Monza tifosi transported to the Far East.
"That was incredible," said a jubilant Sato. "One point was what I was after, but I've scored two, which is excellent for the team. I really appreciate what the team and especially all the mechanics have done. The car was really good and the strategy, tyres and engine all worked well together.
"The crowds were unbelievable, waving at me on every single lap and I saw everything. It was great and I appreciate the fans. This is one of the best feelings of my life."
Team boss Eddie Jordan admitted that the result was a surprise. "I didn't expect Takuma to come here and qualify seventh and finish fifth. He drove a perfect race and showed the talent I've been telling everyone about," he said.
"It's been a tough battle in the championship midfield this season and finishing sixth is very important to us as it brings respectability."
Respectability and also a bonus of approximately $2 million, a much-needed boost for the Irish team as rumours circulate that they may lose their Deutsche Post sponsorship.
The extra income earned by Sato is unlikely to save his seat at Jordan, and the end of season betting still has Eddie Irvine joining Jordan with Sato returning to a test driver's role at BAR.
And the rest of yesterday's race? A formality. Another perfectly played one-two by Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello with Raikkonen third and Montoya fourth. The Colombian secured third place in the drivers' championship.
The Ferrari dominance continued unabated, however. Yesterday's result put the Italian team on 221 points, the combined total of the points earned by all the other teams in the championship fight this year. Schumacher wrote another legend, finishing all 17 races this season on the podium.
With the teams due to meet at the end of this month to discuss how to restore Formula One's fortunes and improve what has become cynically known as "the show", the first item on the agenda has to be meaningful changes to level the playing field.
So far the talk has been of solutions which would turn the sport into a wheeled World Wrestling Federation smackdown. The sport's mandarins, closeted in ivory towers of disregard for the faithful, will hopefully have been given a salutary demonstration yesterday, when Takuma Sato, a nowhere kid from a no-place team, put his hopes and dreams in his ability to pummel a troubled machine through 191 miles of torture to prove a point.
