Rudyard Kipling would have been proud. With all the action squeezed in the lower points places, Michael Schumacher took the art of "softly, softly catchee monkey" to new levels as he cruised back into the championship lead with an unchallenged victory at yesterday's US Grand Prix at Indianapolis.

It was also the day Jordan finally regained the podium, but only after Heinz-Harald Frentzen had been robbed of second by a brilliant piece of Ferrari strategy.

After a jump start penalty had removed David Coulthard from the equation (the Scot had passed Schumacher at the start) and an engine fire had forced Mika Hakkinen into retirement a third of the way in, Schumacher was left, almost unnoticed, to race to the victory.

Behind him was team-mate Rubens Barrichello, who had pushed Frentzen down to third 19 laps from home when Ferrari bluffed Jordan into bringing Frentzen into the pits for what the Irish squad thought would be a simultaneous pit stop.

When Frentzen entered the pits, however, the Ferrari crew retreated and Barrichello was able to stretch a gap big enough to allow him to retake the track in second after his own stop.

It was still a day for Jordan to celebrate, however, with Frentzen claiming his and his team's first podium place since a third in Brazil this year.

From the start Coulthard leapt past a static Schumacher to grab the lead going into turn one, but marshals immediately signalled that the Scot was under investigation for a possible jump start.

Once in the twisting and still damp infield, the battles grew closer and closer until, almost inevitably, a Jordan got embroiled in a clash; Jarno Trulli and Williams' Jenson Button almost collided in the tight and slippy confines of the new road course. Both were forced off track and both were then forced to repair damage, which dropped them to back of the pack.

At the start of lap seven, aided by the slipstream from Coulthard's car, Schumacher dived outside the Scot on the entry to turn one and nudged his way past, despite Coulthard pushing ever wider into the corner to try to fend the German off.

It was to no avail, however, and Schumacher screamed away to take a lead that would soon become emphatic. Within seconds Coulthard was, as expected, called in for a 10-second stop-go penalty for jump starting. Dropped to sixth, he then was forced to come in again to change his wet tyres, a move already undertaken by Rubens Barrichello and Mika Hakkinen, who had dropped to fifth. But with spots of rain still falling, Schumacher stayed out on wets, opening a larger and larger lead.

Jordan, too, decided to hold fire, and Heinz-Harald Frentzen stayed out and moved from up to second, some 16 seconds behind Schumacher.

But while Frentzen profited, his team-mate once again suffered the sort of bad luck that would lead the most rational to believe that they had committed the most heinous of sins in a past life. After his clash with Button, Trulli pitted for dry tyres from the back of the grid.

His crew, however, had brought out the wrong set, and 26 seconds later Trulli finally exited the pits. But the Italian never got the chance to recover any kind of position, as his Jordan gave up just beyond the end of the pit exit.

Within seconds Frentzen too was in, but his quick stop for dry weather rubber dropped him back just two places, Hakkinen and Ralf Schumacher just sneaking past as the Jordan driver exited the pit lane.

Hakkinen now began to reel in the elder Schumacher, and a sequence of superb laps cut the lead to just four seconds by lap 26. It was a challenge that should have yielded some reward, but after a run of races which have seen Hakkinen miraculously gain control of the championship from Schumacher, lady luck called in the Finn's debts and on lap 27 smoke and flame spewed from the back of his MP4-15 and the Finn's challenge was over.

Hakkinen's demise suddenly catapulted Frentzen to third. But after the pursuing Jos Verstappen spun, BAR's Jacques Villeneuve rose to fourth and he began to catch the EJ10. On lap 39, Ralf Schumacher made his first fuel stop, an 11-second halt that handed Frentzen second and dropped the Williams driver to fifth, where a resurgent Coulthard was waiting to pounce. Frentzen, though, was hardly in control.

Even after Villeneuve's pursuit was briefly ended when he spun as he tried to stay with the German, his threat was merely replaced by that of Rubens Barrichello. By lap 46 the gaps between the Jordan and the Ferrari was down to under a second.

Schumacher, meanwhile, out on his own in the lead, made a lonely pit stop on lap 49, his seven-second visit to the garage hardly biting into his 44-second lead. A lap later and Frentzen was in, Jordan responding to the Ferrari crew staying out in the pit in apparent expectation of Barrichello. But Ferrari tactician Ross Brawn was merely bluffing, and as Frentzen pulled up in front of the Jordan garage, the Ferrari crew retreated, leaving Barrichello out to push for a couple of quick laps to put him ahead of Frentzen after his stop.