The Austrian Grand Prix had not treated Michael Schumacher kindly in the past. Poor results, accidents and, especially, controversy over team orders had turned the Austrian race into Schumacher's nemesis. He had one final chance to make amends with the track, and in a rare fairy-tale moment, everything came right for the World Champion last Sunday. Richard Barnes reviews Schumacher's moment of glory at the Austrian Grand Prix

Austria hasn't been kind to Michael Schumacher. In his five appearances at the A1-Ring prior to Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, Schumacher had enjoyed a mixed bag of results - a 6th, 3rd, DNF, 2nd and 1st. It's not the below-par results that have hurt Schumacher, so much as the fact that each Austrian race had dented either his Championship hopes or his professional image.

In 1997, he gave away nine precious WDC points to eventual Championship winner Jacques Villeneuve. A year later, insult was heaped upon injury. Not only did his third place finish result in a loss of ground to Mika Hakkinen, Schumacher also suffered the indignity of trying to explain teammate Eddie Irvine's 'brake problem' to a skeptical world during the post-race press conference, while the victorious McLaren pair chuckled openly at his discomfort.

After missing the 1999 Austrian race with the broken leg sustained at Silverstone, Schumacher returned in 2000 with a bang - literally, as a first corner shunt with BAR's Ricardo Zonta ended his weekend effort on a sour note. The 2001 event was also marred, after a bitter Rubens Barrichello was forced to concede second place to his German team leader, and the Ferrari team orders debacle came to a head with the infamous manufactured result in 2002.

Ferrari arrived at Spielberg determined to atone for last year's controversy. For Schumacher personally, the opportunity was also significant. With the Austrian event likely to be scrapped from next year's calendar, Schumacher had one final opportunity to show Austrian fans that he could not only win, but do so with his pride and sense of honour intact. And, in one of those rare fairy-tale F1 moments, every element fell perfectly into place for the German World Champion. It's unlikely that he could have scripted it better. For, if Schumacher was out to impress at Austria, fate certainly served him with every opportunity to do it. When the dust had settled, ITV commentator James Allen boldly pronounced that this was possibly Schumacher's finest 'come from behind' victory. A cold, hard hindsight view of the circumstances reveals that, while the win was both convincing and deserved (a first for Schumacher in Austria), it wasn't the epic triumph that it seemed at the chequered flag.

It started on Saturday afternoon, with Schumacher's deft control of a near-disastrous rear-end loss of traction at turn 2 on his single qualifying lap. While the German's car control was visibly impressive, the braking mistake that necessitated it wasn't. It took great concentration and commitment from Schumacher to recover from that error and nail the second and third sectors flawlessly to pip pole. But Schumacher will realise that his 54th pole position performance was far from his best and that, given the performance differential between his Ferrari and Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren, the Finn probably did the better job on the day.

After the jitters of a double-aborted start, Schumacher looked set to romp away with the race - until rain once again intervened, as it has so often recently, to disrupt the established order. In keeping with the trend of the entire weekend, it was just enough to set Schumacher back, not enough to seriously derail his challenge. After two tiptoe laps, the moisture had subsided enough to eliminate Michelin's conditional advantage, and Schumacher started to quickly rebuild his lead. Until the pitstops...

If any moment defined Austria 2003, it was the image of Schumacher sitting calmly in the car as his mechanics reacted with near-panic to the small fire that had ignited when the faulty refuelling hose was pulled from the fuel intake. Fire always evokes instant fear and horror in F1 circles, and for good reason. Anybody who witnessed Ronnie Peterson's or Niki Lauda's horrific accidents needs no reminder that this is the ugliest threat in an otherwise beautiful sport. Yet, for all the initial shock of seeing an F1 car on fire again, and the immediate mental recall of Jos Verstappen's Benetton engulfed in flames in 1994, the incident was a minor one by comparison. Doubtless, it could have turned nasty, and thankfully it didn't. But for Schumacher, as for any driver, 'could have happened' doesn't count as much as 'did happen'.

What did happen is that Schumacher was able to resume racing after a brief delay. The concerns that the fire might have damaged the Ferrari, or unnerved the German, were immediately dispelled: neither F1 cars nor Schumacher's commitment to racing are that fragile. Ultimately, Schumacher had entered the pits with a small lead and left with a small deficit. With the Ferrari's straight line speed advantage, and on a circuit with two clear overtaking opportunities, it wasn't going to take vintage Schumacher driving to get him back into the frame.

A third concern, that Ferrari had only been able to fill Schumacher's car for five seconds before the refuelling hose malfunctioned, proved to be yet another minor, but not critical, setback. Even after his forced early second stop, the fuel-laden Schumacher Ferrari was comfortably able to peg Raikkonen's advantage back to a couple of tenths per lap - not nearly enough to put the Finn in a race-winning position.

Still, Schumacher faced the immediate challenge of finding a way past Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya, who have both grown adept at the quintessential art of doggedly defending track position against faster pursuers. Both problems were resolved within seconds of each other. Although, ironically, the attention-grabbing sight of Montoya's BMW engine expiring caused the TV director to miss Schumacher's finest moment of the race - the passing move on Raikkonen. It summed up the weekend aptly, with the visually spectacular taking precedence over the subtly efficient.

F1 drivers must lament the sad reality that, all too often, their best moments and finest efforts go unrecognised, that the midfield finishers have often had to work harder and show greater skill than some of the frontrunners. So, when a moment of glory beckons, they'll take it - even Michael Schumacher will. After five years of leaving Austria under a cloud of controversy or unfulfilled expectations, he revelled in the role of heroic winner on Sunday. We were even treated to the rarest of pleasures, a Schumacher pun during the post-race press conference.

The German was cock-a-hoop that the chips had fallen perfectly for him, and who could blame him? Prior to Sunday's race, Austria was the only regular venue on the calendar where Schumacher could not claim at least one convincing and deserved win. With this win, Schumacher has completed the set. It wasn't a classic performance along the lines of Spain 1996 or Hungary 1998, but it didn't need to be. Schumacher would have wanted just one happy career memory of Austria, and he got that and more.

Even though Raikkonen's eventual second has preserved his status as surprise Championship leader, Schumacher has every reason to be satisfied with his Championship progress as well. After four competitive runs, the F2003-GA has proved bulletproof as expected. That puts Schumacher in the position that he knows and enjoys best, the relentlessly consistent grinding away of the opposition challenge - lap by lap, stint by stint, race by race - until the resistance crumbles and fades. The new points system has played to Raikkonen's advantage so far. The longer the season continues, the more it will factor to Schumacher's benefit.

If Raikkonen wants to take this Championship to the wire, he cannot afford another DNF, as in Spain. With one of Schumacher's favourite tracks, Monaco, up next on the calendar, Raikkonen had best cherish the glory of leading the Championship while it lasts. Even after his downbeat start to the season, the German is already looking formidable again.