After his crushing performance in 2002, Michael Schumacher will begin the defence of his crown with his sights already set on a record-breaking sixth world title. Winning that, there will only be one important record the German champion will not own: Ayrton Senna's 65 pole positions. Atlas F1's Thomas O'Keefe looks at Schumacher's chances of enjoying a near perfect year that would see him surpassing the late Brazilian's mark

Amidst all the hoopla of pre-season launches, sponsor announcements and drivers maneuvering for the last few spots on the grid, Michael Schumacher's remarks on February 11, 2003 stood out; he said that he will decide later on this year whether he will retire from Formula One. "I will make up my mind about this step some time this year. I'm in the lucky position that the decision depends mainly on me. The day when I don't want to work hard on myself to be top in racing anymore will also be the day that I'd be better off giving up."

Presumably, apart from rationales like "wanting to spend more time with my family" and "making way for new blood in the sport" which we will probably hear from Michael later on this year, the main reason for Schumacher to hang up his Schuberth helmet will be when he wins a sixth World Drivers' Championship, something no one else, not even Juan Manuel Fangio, has done. Last year, he managed to win the title by the 11th race of the 17-race season, the French Grand Prix on July 21, 2002; this year, it will probably take a bit longer but Ferrari should be strong enough to have it locked up by Monza on September 14, 2003, leaving at least a few races for Barrichello to squabble over with Montoya and Raikkonen, this time with Michael's active assistance.

But even if Michael Schumacher wins the title again in 2003, I really wonder if he will ever retire unless he has also broken one last record that he will only be able to break this year with great difficulty and not until the very end of the season.

To begin with, we know that Michael Schumacher is not exactly steeped in the history of Grand Prix racing and that he has never attached much importance to the records and statistics that are mounting up under his name in the record books saying that he will focus on such things when he is in his rocking chair, entertaining Mick and Gina Maria's children. As he said just this week, "What I really want to do is just enjoy myself driving, World titles are mere statistics."

But camp followers of Formula One could not help but notice that at Monza in 2000, when Michael Schumacher scored his 41st win, equaling one of Ayrton Senna's records, an extraordinary thing happened: the supposedly unemotional German literally broke down in tears at the post-race press conference at the very mention by a reporter of the name "Senna."

Michael's brother, Ralf, was sitting to his left and looked stunned as his older brother buried his face in his hands and was rendered speechless: Mika Hakkinen, the supposed Finnish Iceman, no stranger to tears at Monza himself, was on Michael's right and instinctively knew what to do: he reached out and put his arm around Schumacher and moved the questioner on to other topics. It will be remembered that Michael Schumacher's Benetton B194-Ford was following Senna's Williams FW16 on May 1, 1994, at Imola when Senna went off the road at Tamburello curve and crashed fatally, and Schumacher followed in Senna's footsteps from that moment on in more ways than one.

Two seasons on from Schumacher's emotional day at Monza, he has pulled even with the legendary Fangio by winning five World Drivers' Championships. With 11 victories in the 2002 season, Schumacher has now supplanted the record he jointly held with Nigel Mansell of 9 wins in a single season, which was originally set in 1992.

Wins though will not be Michael Schumacher's only quest for 2003; instead, more than usually he will be focused on pole positions. Senna, an unearthly qualifier, managed to put his car on pole 65 times and that record still stands; Schumacher has done it 50 times as of the end of the 2002 season. I don't think he will leave the sport until he equals or beats that record. Can he do it?

Let's do the math and handicap his chances. Assuming Spa remains stricken from the calendar, Schumacher will have only 16 races in the 2003 season to work with in pulling off this miracle, but who would dare count him out after all he has achieved thus far. To refresh your memory as to the vital statistics in the 17-race 2002 season, Schumacher was on the podium for all 17 races, had seven poles, seven fastest laps and 11 wins. His failure to take more pole positions in 2002 was due to a spectacular run of seven poles by Montoya in mid-season. But in 2001, Schumacher did manage 11 poles so he is no slouch in qualifying.

Although he has lost Spa as a place to take pole (where he has only been on pole once, remarkably, though he has won the Belgium Grand Prix six times) which somewhat diminishes his chances, Schumacher is known for his capacity to be quick out of the box and should be one of the chief beneficiaries of the One Hot Lap Qualifying procedure to be introduced in 2003.

Amazingly, of the 16 circuits to be used in the 2003 season, Schumacher has taken pole at each one of them in just the last three seasons, 2000-2002. As to the early races that will tell the tale as to whether or not he will have a shot at Senna's record, Australia is his weak spot, his one and only pole there being back in 2001; if Ferrari goes through the trouble of bringing one F2003-GA to Melbourne for him to try, you will know they are very serious about the qualifying record.

The second race of the season, Malaysia, Michael Schumacher owns: no one but Michael has been on pole there from 1999-2002. Brazil, like Australia, is a race where Schumacher has scored only one pole, in 2001.

If Schumacher is still in record-breaking mode by the fourth race of the season, San Marino, he will probably keep his hopes alive, as the Imola track is in Ferrari's backyard and he has taken pole there in 1995 in the Benetton-Renault and in 1996 and 2002 in the Ferrari.

Barcelona, where all the teams test, is nevertheless a circuit Schumacher aces above all the rest, having scored his second pole position there in 1994 in the Benetton-Ford, doing it again in 1995 with Renault power and putting his Ferrari on pole in 2000, 2001 and 2002, five poles at Barcelona in all.

Austria is next up this season, earlier than it usually is, and the last time Formula One will go there to the pretty track sculpted out of a mountainside in the Austrian countryside. The A1 Ring in Austria has never been a particularly good circuit for Michael Schumacher so perhaps he will say Good Riddance to it. In both 2001 and 2002 he scored his ignominious team orders positions when Barrichello let him by, but Schumacher did manage one pole there, in 2001, so not all is lost. Given the bad Karma there, if he qualifies on pole in Austria in 2003, it will be a good omen that he might actually pull the miracle off.

The streets of Monaco have been kind to Michael over the years and in 1994, the Grand Prix of Monaco was his very first pole position; he also won that race and had fastest lap in his Benetton-Ford, ironically, the first race after Senna's death at Imola. In all, he has been on pole three times at Monaco and used to live in the Principality so he is no stranger to the streets of Monaco.

Montreal is another of his favorite tracks, where he has taken pole six times in his career, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2001, a circuit second only to Suzuka as a place Schumacher is more likely than not to take pole.

Understandingly, Nurburgring, the track closest to his boyhood home in Kerpen, Germany, is one that both Schumacher brothers know well and Michael's three pole positions there, taken together with the unpredictable wet/dry weather conditions in the Eifel Mountains the Schumachers grew up with, gives Michael good odds of taking a fourth pole position in Nurburgring.

Magny-Cours was the scene of Schumacher's crowning win in 2002 that brought him his fourth World Drivers' Championship when, in the closing laps, leader Kimi Raikkonen was being chased by Schumacher down to the Adelaide hairpin and Kimi hit an oil patch just left behind by Allan McNish's Toyota, spinning Raikkonen off at Adelaide, which alerted Schumacher to avoid the oil, the key to getting around Raikkonen and winning the race. I would call the French Grand Prix a lucky race for Schumacher and his three pole position in 1996, 1997 and 2000 support that conclusion, though Montoya bested him in 2002 in a thrilling tit-for-tat qualifying struggle that was the best Hour of Power of the whole season.

Silverstone is one of those tracks that has thrown up the best and the worst for Schumacher. He won one British Grand Prix there in the driving rain in 1998 while serving out a stop-and-go penalty in the pits. But in 1994 he lost a race there for a relatively minor infraction - passing Damon Hill's Williams on the parade lap. In 2000, his teammate Barrichello was the one who took pole for Ferrari and Schumacher himself has only managed pole at Silverstone once, in 2001. And in 1999, Schumacher had his only serious accident at Silverstone, at Stowe corner, when the brakes gave way and he headed into the tire barrier at phenomenal speed, breaking his leg in the process, not a good memory of Silverstone.

As for Hockenheim, another home circuit for the Schumacher brothers, it has not been a circuit Schumacher has done particularly well on over the years, which, of course, has not stopped the fanatical German fans from flocking into the campgrounds and stadium area each race to see him try his best amidst the fireworks, horns and fantastic array of creative head gear and flags that are part and parcel of a race weekend at Hockenheim. However, Michael Schumacher seemed to take to the new Herman Tilke redesign of Hockenheim and took his only pole there, the win and fastest lap in 2002, just a week after he had clinched the Championship in France, when you might have thought that even Calvinist Michael Schumacher might have let up. You would have been wrong.

The Hungaroring, which is generously dubbed "Monaco without the walls," is another track that is a statistical plus for Michael Schumacher. He has qualified on pole there throughout his career, from 1994 in the Benetton-Ford, to 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2001 for Ferrari. If he gets as far as Hungary with Senna's qualifying record still in sight, you can bet Hungary will be one circuit he can count on to run out the string.

Although his qualifying nemesis from 2002, Juan Pablo Montoya, put in a startling qualifying lap of 1:20.264 at Monza in 2001 - the fastest qualifying lap ever - to take pole, Michael Schumacher will have the Tifosi rooting for him in 2003 from the grandstands and the trees and that should create a nourishing environment for Schumacher to qualify on pole. It must be said, however, that Monza is among his "worst" tracks (always a relative term in Schumacher's case) and he has taken pole there only twice, once in 1998 and again in 2000.

At Indianapolis, although he may have misjudged the start/finish line just ahead of the yard of bricks on the main straightaway in trying to conjure up a dead heat with Rubens Barrichello in 2002, as with the other new Grand Prix track, Malaysia, Schumacher owns pole at Indy having won it three times, and would probably like to retire keeping the record intact that every time he raced there he was on pole, even less than two weeks after 9/11 when it is thought that he did not even want to race.

By October 12, 2003 when the Japanese Grand Prix will be run, the die will have been cast in Schumacher's run at Senna's qualifying record. He will be driving in his 193rd race and will still be 34 years old, the same age as Senna was when he left us. In the unlikely but statistically possible event that the combination of the reliable Ferrari F2002 in the early fly-away races and the even faster Ferrari F2003-GA on European soil has put Schumacher in a position to equal or break Senna's record at Suzuka, you can be sure the car will be set up as light and fast as the rules permit, with Schumacher taking off his expensive looking watch and leaving it with his personal assistant, Sabine Kehm, to save a few grams during his qualifying run.

Suzuka is regarded by one and all as one of the handful of remaining "drivers" tracks and, happily for Schumacher, Suzuka is the track where he statistically has his very best chance, having won seven poles in all, going back to the Benetton era and a thoroughly impressive five straight pole positions from 1998 through 2002, including 1999, the year he was injured at Silverstone mid-season and only came back for two races, Malaysia and Japan. To be sure, Schumacher is a driver who knows how to finish a season at the Japanese Grand Prix on a high note and it certainly would be an appropriate venue for him to accomplish this ultimate achievement of coming to terms with Senna's mastery of one lap only, where the powers of human concentration which both these men obviously had or have in inhuman proportion, are focused for just over the 1 minute 30 seconds it takes to wrestle an 850 horsepower Formula One car around the racetrack.

It would be a staggering accomplishment for Schumacher to pull off such a feat in the context of the 2003 season. But Michael Schumacher is nothing if he is not a perfectionist and one that is fast running out of challenges he cares about. As a consequence, there is a kind of symmetry and perfectionism about such a double-barreled achievement - a Sixth World Drivers' Championship and Record for Most Poles - that would appeal to the orderly and determined side of Schumacher's character.

For me personally, I hope Michael Schumacher equals but does not exceed Senna's record of 65 poles, and then retires, leaving manifest in the record books of Grand Prix racing the special relationship that existed between Senna and Schumacher in life that continues in death at Tamburello Curve.