Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix showcased racing in the old fashioned sense of the word. It also highlighted the difference between winners and whiners... Veteran journalist Barry Kalb, a long time contributer at Atlas F1, explains why the A1-Ring separated the boys from the men

Sunday was what Grand Prix racing is supposed to be all about.

There are reasons old-timers get all misty-eyed when talking about the "old days" of motor racing, the days of Fangio and Moss, Clark and Stewart, Jochen Rindt and Gilles Villeneuve. Until the early 1960s, you could actually see the driver inside the car, and even after the drivers began lying down out of sight, you could see what they were doing. You could see how a driver could make the difference between winning and losing, no matter what he was driving.

It's rare to see that in today's world of space-age technology, when the cars seem to dominate the racing and the driver's input has been diminished, but Michael Schumacher showed it again in Austria on Sunday.

He drove magnificently, he came from behind after a disastrous pitstop, he passed the leader cleanly, and then he ran away from the pack while setting fastest lap after fastest lap.

An awful lot of effort today is devoted to talk of aerodynamics, tires, set-up, balance, not to mention team politics - far too much, in fact. Everyone is an expert, including the amateurs who visit the various bulletin boards on the Internet. Amid all the noise about technical factors, the contribution of the driver is too often overlooked.

However, after the designers and tire manufacturers and mechanics and team managers have done their work, it's up to the driver to get into the car and bring it home before everyone else. But it does not stop some 'experts' from attributing Schumacher's remarkable success to the fact that the Ferrari has the fastest car, and to the suggestion that Schumacher is given preferential treatment over Rubens Barrichello.

Indeed, the Ferrari probably still is intrinsically the fastest, but the F2003-GA's advantage at this moment is quite slim. At Spain two weeks ago, Renault's Fernando Alonso kept pace with Schumacher for the entire race (and beat Barrichello). During Saturday's second practice in Austria, just before qualifying, the first 15 drivers were within one second of each other. During qualifying itself, the first nine were within a second of each other, and Schumacher's pole time was a very meager 0.039 faster than Kimi Raikkonen in the McLaren.

During the actual race, Schumacher was able to pull away from the rest of the pack easily in the early stages, while Raikkonen had no difficulty keeping ahead of Barrichello. The race was gearing up to be another Schumacher romp, until the pitstops.

When Schumacher pulled into the pits on lap 23, he was more than nine seconds ahead of Raikkonen. After his fuel nozzle jammed and then caught fire, he left the pits almost a full second behind Raikkonen. Lap 24 included the 20 seconds Schumacher was motionless in the pits while his team put out the fire. On lap 25, he set out after Raikkonen in earnest.

By lap 31, he was less than half a second behind. On lap 32, he passed Raikkonen, at the same time also inheriting the lead, as Juan Pablo Montoya's BMW engine blew up. Given Schumacher's performance over the next laps, he certainly would have caught Montoya and very probably would have passed him, too, for he gave an awesome demonstration of driving skill.

Between laps 30 and 41, Schumacher lowered his time steadily from 1:10.622 to 1:08.337. He was the fastest man on the track on 10 of those 12 laps; he set a new fastest time of the day four times; he retook the lead; and reportedly he lowered the lap record at least twice. After setting that final record, he pitted on lap 42, and from then on he had it in the bag, cruising between the high 1:09s and the mid 1:10s for the final third of the race. Raikkonen's best lap of the day was more than a second slower than Schumacher's.

You might say, right, that all just shows that Schumacher's car was faster than Raikkonen's and everyone else's. But I say it was Schumacher who was faster.

Barrichello theoretically has the same car as Schumacher, and the two have often spoken of how they fully share set-up information. Yes, Barrichello has been ordered to move for Schumacher on at least a couple of occasions in the past, but that didn't happen very often. In fact, Schumacher consistently out-performs his teammate in every way, and on Sunday at the A1-Ring Barrichello's fastest lap was six-tenths of a second slower than Schumacher's best.

Barrichello always has perfectly plausible explanations for why he didn't go faster. At Sunday's post-race press conference, he said:

"Yeah, I didn't actually feel good for the whole weekend because I have a little bit of a cold. It was hard to push because I was sweating quite a lot in the car but, having said that, I think it was a great race. It was a pity about the pit stop because it's a bit frustrating when you feel that you could have won the race or you could have done better and you lose time but things like that happen and I still finished on the podium, still more points, it is a place that I like very much. I think I paid the price in qualifying for having different tyres and it was a bit of a pity because I could not get past the guys in front, plus the problem in the pits… I was almost ahead of Kimi but there was no way through, so I had to give up."

That was the kind of drive only the best can produce. That's the kind of drive Michael Schumacher gave us last Sunday.

About the author:
Barry Kalb is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience (the Washington Star, CBS News, Time Magazine) and a motor racing fan - especially Formula One - for almost 40 years. He currently resides in Hong Kong.