What landmark did Michael Schumacher achieve with his win at the French Grand Prix? And why does the British Grand Prix bring some hope of the German not winning there? Marcel Schot brings the answers and more anecdotes ahead eleventh race of the season

Just as you thouhgt you've seen it all, Ferrari come up with a new way of winning a race. Michael Schumacher's four-stop strategy to take victory out of Fernando Alonso's hands was in fact the first time more than three stops won the race since Ayrton Senna won the 1993 European Grand Prix at Donington. However, that race was marked by an incredible number of pitstops because of ever changing conditions. In fact, it was the only four-stop winner since Grand Prix distances were limited to just over 300 km in 1971.

The race also saw a rather spectacular bounce back after Indianapolis' mass destruction. No less than 18 cars were classified, the highest numbers since the 1991 Australian Grand Prix, which was red flagged after just 14 laps. Back then 20 cars were classified out of the 26 that had started the race. When looking at the number of cars that were classified against the number of cars that qualified for the race, the 18 out of 20 of this year's French Grand Prix is only matched by the nine out of 10 that finished the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix. The 1961 Dutch Grand Prix didn't see any retirements at all during the race, but both Masten Gregory and Ian Burgess didn't start the race, as they were reserve entries.

While things are definitely on the rise at McLaren, the contrast with last year remains painful. With eight races to go, Kimi Raikkonen can only in theory tie Michael Schumacher's points total when the Finn wins all remaining races and Schumacher wouldn't score another point.

The good thing for those who don't support Schumacher is that Silverstone's next. The German hasn't done as well there as he has done on the circuits we have recently visited. After seven wins in both Canada and France, he's now on to a track where he has only won twice. Although two wins, two second places, a third and two fourth places in twelve races isn't exactly bad, it's also not what we've come to expect of Schumacher. Furthermore, only a single pole position in 2001 shows that Schumacher might be up for a difficult race once again.

This Week in History Rain or Shine

Even though July is considered summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it can rain or shine during a Formula One race.

Rain

For Alessandro Nannini the weekend of the 1988 British Grand Prix didn't start very well. While Benetton were used to being a long way behind McLaren, just as everyone else, the team were used to qualifying on the second or third rows. First qualifying saw Nannini only in 11th place after a small engine fire forced him to change to the spare car. Second qualifying was slightly better, but an eight position on the grid was the worst for Nannini since the first race of the season in Brazil.

At the start in the rain the Italian got the better of Nelson Piquet in the Lotus, while Alain Prost dropped all the way down to eleventh place. In the third lap Nannini moved up another place when Ivan Capelli in the Leyton House-March made a mistake. Despite the tricky conditions Nannini was right on the tail of Mauricio Gugelmin in the other March, with Nigel Mansell following in the Williams-Judd. By that time it was clear that there were only two drivers battling for the win. Gerhard Berger was leading in the Ferrari, closely followed by Ayrton Senna in the McLaren. After six laps the duo had a lead of almost twenty seconds over the rest of the field already.

Slowly but surely the trio of Gugelmin, Nannini and Mansell caught up the second Ferrari of Michele Alboreto and by lap 14 the quartet crossed the line with just 2.5 seconds between them. The fierce battle continued and on lap 16 Gugelmin ran wide once, losing two places to Nannini and Mansell. As Gugelmin slowly lost contact with the others, Alboreto, Nannini and Mansell continued the fight as intensively as always, often crossing the start/finish line with less than a second between them. Four laps later Nannini decided it was time to launch an attack on Alboreto, just as Mansell launched an attack on him. The Benetton driver spotted the lack of room just in time, lifted and spun. The Italian rejoined just behind Gugelmin, losing six seconds on the others.

On the very next lap Nannini was back in fifth. Finally seeing something after having been stuck in the spray of Alboreto's Ferrari for so long, the Benetton driver made up the difference to Mansell in no time at all. Two laps later he was already there, just as Mansell made his way past Alboreto. Nannini quickly disposed of Alboreto to move into fourth place. By now Nannini was the fastest man on the track and he briefly was ahead of Mansell before spinning for a second time.

As Mansell disappeared into the distance right after that, Nannini settled for fourth place, maintaining the same pace as Gugelmin behind him. However, at the front Berger was having problems with his fuel. The Austrian was forced to continue on a relatively slow pace in order to make the finish at all. After 44 laps Mansell passed him and two laps later Alessandro Nannini did the same to move into third place. With no fighting left, Nannini concentrated on finishing the race to claim his first career podium.

Shine

This week it's twenty years ago that one of the hottest races in Formula One history took place in Dallas. When the circus arrived in Texas, the season was at its halfway point with Alain Prost leading, 11.5 points clear of his teammate Niki Lauda. Elio de Angelis of Lotus was third, two points behind Lauda, while Brazilian Nelson Piquet was fourth and rising after having won the previous two races.

With tyre problems evident early in first practice, there was already an early warning of things to come. The qualifying tyres that were usual back then were completely unusable as they deteriorated so quickly that it wasn't even possible to drive a single timed lap on them. First free practice showed the usual image of the McLarens ahead of the rest of the field. They were followed by four different teams as Nelson Piquet (Brabham), Derek Warwick (Renault), Nigel Mansell (Lotus) and Ayrton Senna (Toleman) rounded out the top six on Friday morning. However, the differences were big. While Lauda was less than a tenth ahead of Prost and Piquet and Warwick kept the difference around four tenths, everybody else was over a second behind the McLarens.

When qualifying started in the afternoon, temperatures had increased quite dramatically to 38C/100F. This had a twofold result. First of all the asphalt started to crumble under the pressure of Formula One tyres and secondly, grip got even worse than it already had been. Tyrrell driver Martin Brundle was the first to suffer the consequences when he crashed heavily on his first timed lap. The Briton was sidelined for the rest of the weekend with several broken bones in his legs. When the session came to a close, it wasn't a McLaren one-two, but a Lotus one as Nigel Mansell posted the quickest time ahead of Elio de Angelis. Much to everyone's surprise, the McLarens were down in fourth and seventh place.

Saturday was rendered largely useless as the track had crumbled further overnight. Of the frontrunners, only Derek Warwick improved his time to claim third place on the grid. More damage to the track was done as a result of the support program on Saturday afternoon and even though attempts had been made to improve the state of the asphalt overnight, the track was still in terrible shape by the time the drivers arrived for the warm-up, which had been scheduled for 7am on Sunday. The timing of the warm-up did see the first smiles of the weekend as Frenchman Jacques Laffite turned up in the pitlane wearing his pyjamas. In the end the drivers were out of bed early for nothing as further repairs deemed the warm-up impossible. It was agreed to do a three lap warm-up just prior to the race, which had been cut from 78 to 68 laps.

Rene Arnoux in the Ferrari was the first to ran into problems as his engine refused to cooperate at the start of the parade lap. When the race got underway at 11am, Nigel Mansell made the best of his maiden pole and opened up a gap right away. Behind the Lotuses, Derek Warwick and Ayrton Senna were the first of the rest of the field, with the Brazilian pushing hard to get past the Renault. However, on the second lap Senna pushed a little too hard and spun, damaging his car in the process.

Meanwhile, Warwick started catching up with de Angelis and on the fourth lap the Briton darted past the Italian. Mansell had a lead of nearly four seconds, but Warwick was able to match his pace and even nibble something off the gap bit by bit. After ten laps, Warwick was on the tail of the Lotus and into the 11th lap he decided to go for the lead. Unfortunately for the Renault driver, there was absolutely zero grip away from the race line. He lost control of the car and slammed into the barriers, ending his race there and then. This left Mansell with a three-second lead over Niki Lauda.

The Austrian was promptly overtaken by Elio de Angelis, who quickly closed the gap to his struggling teammate. Meanwhile a thus far unnoticed Keke Rosberg moved up the field in his Williams. By lap 18, Mansell was leading by half a second over de Angelis, with Rosberg another half second back. On the next lap Rosberg took second when de Angelis made a mistake and the cool Finn immediately put the pressure full on the struggling leader. Mansell didn't budge, though. No matter what Rosberg tried, he couldn't find a way past the black and gold Lotus. Meanwhile the rest caught up with the two and by lap 30 Mansell, Rosberg, Prost, de Angelis and Lauda were within a space of five seconds.

Five laps later it was all over for Mansell. Rosberg grabbed the lead in a bold move and despite Mansell trying to snatch it back right away held on to it back frantically blocking the Briton. Shortly after that Mansell had to pit and thus Rosberg was left leading with Alain Prost in second. However, the Frenchman didn't give up and by lap 49 moved into the lead and quickly left the Williams behind him. While it looked like a certain win for Prost, the Frenchman lost concentration and hit a wall on the 57th lap. The result was rather painful. Not physically, but mentally. A certain victory quickly faded as the Frenchman was forced to park his car, seeing Rosberg sailing back into the lead several seconds later.

Rosberg had a comfortable lead of ten seconds for the remaining ten laps. The number two was an unlikely one. After having started from the back, Rene Arnoux in the Ferrari had driven the race of his life, while many drivers struggled to stay on track. When the black and white flag was shown after 67 laps and two hours, there were two heroes left on the lead lap: winner Keke Rosberg and comeback man Rene Arnoux.

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