Roger Horton returns from the Magny Cours paddock with a few insights and reflections on the weekend's events

"I feel a bit sad for Mika," said Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn just moments after his team had once again ground their opposition in yet another convincing demonstration of their superiority at the French Grand Prix at Magny Cours. "The poor bloke must be suffering, just when is his bad luck going to stop? I mean, on top of their other issues, this must be making it difficult for the team this year."

For a man who had just seen his driver score his sixth win from ten starts - and who now leads the World Championship standings by the massive margin of 31 points - the above may have looked like the words of someone gloating in the moment of victory. In reality it was far from the case, for Mika Hakkinen is one of the most respected drivers in Formula One, and the Ferrari boss has suffered at his hands too many times to be of the mind to take a cheap shot.

Instead, he was stating a common feeling in the paddock that while some may be enjoying the spectacle of seeing the continued humiliation of the much-vaunted McLaren-Mercedes team, there is almost universal sympathy for the current plight of their twice World Champion driver, who once again never managed to get into the parade lap, let alone the race proper - a gearbox-related problem being the cause of this latest non-race.

A relaxed and smiling Mika Hakkinen may have been able to joke with journalists in the McLaren motorhome after the race, but by then some three hours had passed, enough time for the Finn to get his emotions back under control. The reality is that he must have long since given up any serious pretence that this season could see him become a title contender, despite what the PR releases might say.

As is increasingly the case, this race was all about tyres. Brawn was full of praise for the tyres that Bridgestone had supplied for Ferrari's use at Magny Cours. "Very good, you can't criticise them at all, they did a great job," he explained afterwards. "We came here for a test five weeks ago and we were very worried, but they came up with a new compound which we didn't have the opportunity to test, so it was a little bit of a stab in the dark but it worked, and I take my hat off to them - they have a done a very good job."

Indeed, they had done a great job for Ferrari and for McLaren too, because without his ten-second stop-go penalty for speeding in the pitlane, David Coulthard's race pace looked to be quick enough to compute that he would have been in with a strong chance of a win. "I don't think you can look at that too seriously because people only push as much at the end as they need to and it looked to me as if Michael (Schumacher) had backed off, but the fact is it obviously cost me points," the Scot mused after the race.

For the second race in succession, the reigning World Champion had been aided by having one of his main rivals eliminated from race-winning contention through a moment of inattention exiting the pits. Unlike Ralf Schumacher at the Nurburgring, Coulthard, although angry with himself for making the error, was at least prepared to talk about it with the media afterwards.

"What happened in this case was that I think I switched it off (the speed limiter) a little bit early, before the end of the pitlane," he explained. "Now I wasn't aware of doing anything different from what I normally do, obviously it was quite an intense moment trying to get information from the team about where Michael was, about where cars were, and the bottom line is I have come off the limiter too soon and just accelerated 5 km/h over the limit just at the very end of the pitlane. Anyway, as hard as it is, those are the rules and we just have to accept them."

Sometimes, on just such small errors of judgements, races and championships are won and lost.

The key to Bridgestone's success was not only the speed of their tyres, but their consistency, all three sets of Michael Schumacher's tyres having worked well for him. His brother Ralf, by contrast, looked very strong on his first set of Michelins, and he was able to lead the race and pull away from his brother's Ferrari. But after he made his first stop he was always in trouble, his second and third sets not able to provide his car with anything like the balance he needed to challenge for the win.

Ralf, in contrast to his teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, had chosen the softer of the two available Michelin compounds, but so slow was he towards the end of his second stint that the Williams team ordered him to pit immediately or let his closely following teammate overtake, as Williams's technical director Patrick Head explained afterwards. "Our concern was that Ralf was going very slowly at that time," Head said, "and in effect they were both dropping into Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard's clutches. If it had continued like that we could have found ourselves finishing fourth and fifth."

Apparently, the younger Schumacher took several laps to obey this instruction, and Head was seen making several trips to speak to Ralf's engineer on the pit wall, although afterwards there was some suggestion that his radio was only working intermittently. Whatever, Ralf Schumacher once again drove a pretty strong race to take a well deserved second place, his only real error coming during his first stop for fuel and tyres, when he engaged first gear a fraction too early, causing the rear wheels to turn before the mechanic on the right rear wheel had secured it properly.

This extended his stationary time to 10.3 seconds, some 2.6 seconds longer than his brother Michael, who stopped a lap later, and who was only at rest for 7.7 seconds. That was enough for the number one Ferrari driver to take the lead, and as far as a contest for the race win was concerned, that was it. Even though with his poorly handling car he was not challenging for the lead later in the race, it should be noted that this is the second race in succession where Ralf has made mistakes during pitstops when fighting for the lead with his brother, having overshot his marker at the Nurburgring just over a week ago. If this year is indeed a dress rehearsal for a full-blown Championship challenge next year, one hopes he is learning these lessons now.

This race marked Ralf Schumacher's first ever pole position, and it was also the first pole position for the Michelin-Williams-BMW combination. It was clear during Saturday's qualifying contest with his brother's Ferrari that the balance of power had firmly swung, at Magny Cours at least, in favour of Ralf. For the first time it was the Williams driver who was setting the pace and the Ferrari driver playing catch up. Despite all the comments from the Williams hierarchy downplaying their developing package, it is crystal clear that the main challenger to Michael Schumacher on a race by race basis is now coming from the Grove-based team, and not from the Greys at Woking.

During the latter part of Saturday's qualifying session, an interesting cameo was played down at the slow end of the pitlane that normally gets very little attention. With every run the Minardi of Fernando Alonso was getting quicker and quicker. So much so, in fact, that according to Minardi boss Paul Stoddart, the Arrows team reacted by placing a 'spotter' outside the Minardi garage to alert his team when Alonso was about to start his last run, and as he did so the Arrows of Enrique Bernoldi duly emerged and "somehow got in Alonso's way," spoiling his last qualifying attempt.

Their fear being, of course, that especially with the improved form of the Benettons at Magny Cours, an Arrows car could face the indignity of starting from the last row on the grid. Their 'ploy' worked and so both Minardis started from the eleventh row, but as one Minardi man said to me, "this is the World Championship; what else can you expect?"

Certainly not sportsmanship in any form; sportsmanship is a rather quaint and outmoded concept in the modern world of F1 racing.