SPANISH GRAND PRIX: In 1996, Michael Schumacher slammed across the Barcelona finish line in a virtual smokescreen of spray to deliver, in appalling conditions, his first win for Ferrari. With arms pumping out of the cockpit into the rain, he nose-dived his car towards the outstretched arms and delirious faces crowding the pit wall to celebrate the dawn of a new age for the Italian team.
That rapture, the joy of that moment of hopeful epiphany, seemed like a sepia shot from the dusty archives yesterday as the now four-time world champion took another facile victory at the Circuit de Catalunya. Rounding the final New Holland curve, the German slowed to a virtual crawl, took a good look around and savoured the predictable view of the new grandstand awash with tens of thousands of red and yellow Prancing Horse flags - an all new picture, in tones of lurid red, of total domination.
With the merest flick of the steering wheel he dipped momentarily towards the Ferrari pit wall and raised a flacid arm in all too familiar acceptance of his 57th career win.
If the first third of the 2002 Formula One championship needed to be captured in a Kodak moment, this was it. Schumacher and Ferrari, untouchable, unbeatable and apparently unmoved by the recording of another victory. Like a gunfighter walking away from another dusty shootout in a careless western burg, this was just another notch on the belt, another scalp taken.
And in walking away, Schumacher might well have raised an eyebrow in faintly quizzical ennui. It wasn't even as if the challenger was up to speed.
On Saturday, Schumacher had taken his 46th pole position, blasting in with his last run and settings borrowed from team-mate Rubens Barrichello, to eclipse the Brazilian by three-tenths. His brother Ralf, relegated to third by almost a second, sighed that there was no hope. He was right.
Yesterday, armed with Bridgestone tyres, which were reported by paddock speculators to be good for three-quarters of a second over his Michelin-shod rivals, Schumacher blasted away from the start line and within 12 laps had opened a 10.5 second gap. The pundits had been right, and from the chasing Williams the resignation was almost palpable.
Even with the retirement of second-placed Barrichello at the start, neither Ralf nor Juan Pablo Montoya could offer resistance as the superiority of the F2002 and Bridgestone told again.
Indeed, as the gap moved from healthy through to comfortable and on to what seemed like a different time zone, keeping an eye on the leader became irrelevant. Further down the street a couple of duellists were within firing range of each other.
David Coulthard, who, until this weekend, has found his McLaren MP4-17 about as effective as a pea-shooter against a howitzer, suddenly found himself in command of a machine capable of doing damage. Starting from seventh, having been outgunned by Williams and by Renault's Jenson Button in qualifying, the Scot quickly got the better of Button and, when Ralf Schumacher ran wide, pitted for a new nose cone and had problems with tyre fitting during that stop, Coulthard suddenly found himself third behind Montoya and chasing a podium finish.
It would be only his second of the year, but as he climbed on to the lowest step of the podium beside Schumacher and Montoya, he bore the expression of a man who had just landed a maiden win.
Behind the Scot the barrage was even more sustained. Jenson Button, media darling turned paddock down-and-out, continued to reinvent himself in the image of bright young thing, powering his Renault to fourth before ceding that position to Sauber's Nick Heidfeld in the run-up to his second stop when his tyres were beginning to look torn and frayed.
Two points and the maintenance of fourth place in the drivers' title race looked certain though, until suddenly he dropped back into the range of Sauber's Felippe Massa and the surprisingly effective Arrows of Heinz Harald Frentzen.
Button held off the charges, letting Massa scorch his tyres as the Brazilian tried to attack through dirty air. But just when it appeared he had allowed the youngster to punch himself out, Button slowed dramatically.
The profit of his retirement, and that of his team-mate, Jarno Trulli, a lap later with engine problems, went to Sauber, with Heidfeld fourth and Massa fifth, a result that pushes the Ferrari-powered Swiss outfit into joint fourth in the constructors' fight with Renault.
The final points place was wrapped up by Frentzen as the German scored his first point since San Marino just over 12 months ago.
For Frentzen the result will surely feel not simply like a testament to the work he has done at Arrows, but also as an act of revenge against Eddie Jordan, the man who sacked him as a lost cause midway through last season. For while Frentzen is bringing new life to a team that last scored in Austria 2001, Jordan have wilted, the team collapsing in on itself, racked with consumptive splutters, from both the Honda engine housed in its EJ12 and from its human resources department as it expels staff in a welter of blood-letting.
Yesterday both Giancarlo Fisichella and Takuma Sato were gone after just a dozen laps, the Italian, on lap five, with the same hydraulic pressure problem he had suffered at Imola, and Sato, with a by now customary spin, going out on lap 11.
