Motor racing: British Grand Prix - Schumacher's smash shatters his challenge

FIVE YEARS ago, Michael Schumacher was following Ayrton Senna through a 190mph curve at Imola when the great Brazilian's car mysteriously left the track and smashed into a wall. The safety precautions brought into Formula One as a result of Senna's fatal crash undoubtedly saved Schumacher's own life yesterday, when his Ferrari plunged off the track halfway round the first lap of the British Grand Prix and ran head-on into a barrier. Last night Schumacher was in Northampton General Hospital undergoing surgery to begin the repair of a broken tibia and fibula in his right leg. Otherwise, his team declared, he had survived unscathed.

The accident deals a severe blow to his attempt to bring Ferrari a first drivers' world championship in a long and often anguished 20 years for motor racing's most revered team. Professor Sid Watkins, Formula One's medical delegate, said last night that Schumacher will probably be out of action for six weeks, a period which includes the races in Austria, Germany and Hungary.

Schumacher may be comforted by the memory of 1994, when he won his first world championship despite missing two races through suspension, and by the news that his principal rival, Mika Hakkinen, also failed to score points at Silverstone yesterday after losing a wheel on his McLaren.

The race was won by David Coulthard, Hakkinen's team-mate, ahead of Eddie Irvine in the second Ferrari and Ralf Schumacher, Michael's younger brother, in a Williams. Damon Hill finished fifth, behind his Jordan team-mate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, and afterwards refused to make an announcement about his future.

If Hill and his wife, Georgie, had needed any further stimulus to thoughts of imminent retirement, Schumacher's crash certainly provided it. And, even with today's precautions, the double world champion can count himself lucky. An accident which began at around 170mph ended with the nose of his car piercing a barrier of used tyres at about 100mph. The barrier held together but failed to stop the front of the car's carbon-fibre monocoque - known as the survival cell - hitting the concrete retaining wall and breaking off. Nor had the wide gravel trap, positioned between the track and the wall, succeeded in slowing the car significantly once Schumacher had lost control.

While an ambulance was taking the driver to the circuit's medical centre, his car was returning to pits, its damaged nose hidden under an improvised cover of plastic awnings. Before it was winched down from the breakdown truck outside the Ferrari garage, the mangled carcass was carefully shrouded with a red satin dust-sheet. Later a Ferrari spokesman announced that the cause of the accident appeared to be a problem with the rear brakes, adding that the car would be taken back to the team's headquarters at Maranello today for extensive analysis.

No amount of analysis ever managed to establish the cause of Senna's accident, and the visual evidence of Schumacher's crash was equally inconclusive. He had made a poor start from second place on the grid, allowing Irvine to jink round him and hold third place behind the two McLarens as they turned into Copse Corner. Up the hill to Maggots and through the left- right-left of Beckett's and Chapel the two Ferraris sped as if tied together by a rubber rope, Schumacher jinking from side to side as he tried to find a way past his team-mate.

As they went down Hangar Straight at 185mph, the sight of the two Ferraris duelling with each other instead of with the enemy evoked thoughts of the increasing rivalry between the two men. This is Irvine's fourth season as Schumacher's No 2, contracted to support his leader and make way for him when necessary. But no grand prix driver can countenance such a situation for ever, and the Irishman's victory at Melbourne in the opening race of the season four months ago seems to have encouraged notions of independence.

Schumacher was clearly anxious to get past Irvine as quickly as possible, in order to get at Coulthard and Hakkinen. As Irvine moved his Ferrari to the left in order to set himself up for the very fast right-handed Stowe Corner, Schumacher positioned himself on the right in order to make a run inside his team-mate. Schumacher turned in early, on a shallower line, but had not succeeded in getting the nose of his car in front when the two men started to brake for the corner.

When Schumacher hit the brakes, it became clear that he was travelling far too fast to take the corner. The front brakes locked, scorching great holes the size of dinner plates in the tyres and leaving black marks all the way to the opposite verge as the car shot across Irvine's bows, trailing white smoke from the burning rubber. The gravel traps are supposed to slow the cars, but this one might as well have been made of polished marble for all the retarding effect it had. Schumacher could be seen to be making himself small in the cockpit as the moment of impact approached, but he seemed unable to delay or reduce its severity by putting the car sideways to spread the load.

As with Senna's crash, driver error seemed possible but unlikely. In the heat of the race's opening minute, Schumacher

might have taken a bigger risk than usual. But the word from inside the team was that something had happened to the car before the front brakes had locked. Formula One teams are not generally noted for giving straightforward explanations for their misfortunes. Ferrari's instant diagnosis may indeed turn out to be the truth, but among other possible causes might be a sticking throttle.

Luckily, the outcome means that there will be no need for a judicial inquiry such as that which followed Senna's tragedy. But useful lessons can still be learnt. Coulthard and Irvine later criticised the type of gravel traps currently in use. The Irishman made the point that all traps should be banked, to give the tyres a better chance to bite on them.

For Ferrari, a short-term replacement for Schumacher is required in time for the Austrian Grand Prix on 25 July. The obvious candidates include Luca Badoer, the team's test driver, who is currently on loan to Minardi, and the unemployed Mika Salo, who has often been mentioned in connection with a Ferrari seat. But immediately after the race the Franco-Sicilian driver Jean Alesi, a Ferrari driver from 1991-95, paid a brief but urgent visit to Jean Todt, the manager of the Italian team. The 35-year-old Alesi, a close friend of Schumacher, has recently been lobbying for a divorce from Sauber, his current employers, in order to return to the team with which he achieved his only grand prix victory. Since Sauber buy their engines from Ferrari, some sort of deal would seem far from unlikely.

As for Schumacher, no one should discount a great racing driver's powers of recovery. If Prof Watkins' prediction turns out to be accurate, the victim of yesterday's horrific accident will come back with 32 championship points to his name and five races to run, facing the biggest challenge of his career.