You only have to watch Mika Hakkinen attack the Hockenheim track - with its combination of high-speed sweeping curves, long straights, rhythmic chicanes and a slow stadium section - to conjure up the distinct possibility that he will win there again this year, as he did in 1998.

On the heels of his stunning Silverstone victory, you can be sure that both Mika and the combined forces of McLaren and Mercedes-Benz will be flat out for the last six races of the season with two objectives in mind: to help David Coulthard pursue his long-shot chance of a Drivers' Championship and to prove that the team from Woking deserves to continue to be mentioned in the same breath as Ferrari. My speculation is a series of close finishes, with Hakkinen moving over if necessary, as Barrichello did in Austria for Schumacher, to let Coulthard pile up the points and get a run going on Michael.

Don't Laugh: Mercedes-Benz has been responsible over the years for some miraculous achievements in motor racing (see Atlas F1's "100 Years of Mercedes" Special Issue): the legendary W25/W125 Silver Arrows of the 1930's in the hands of Caracciola, von Brauchitsch, Fagioli and Lang, the all-conquering Mercedes-Benz W196 Grand Prix cars of the 1955 and 1956 season in the hands of Fangio, Moss and Kling, the Mille Miglia 300 SLR Mercedes sportscars of the same era and finally, the longest-running teammates in the history of Formula One, Hakkinen and Coulthard, who have burnished the Mercedes-Benz name, especially Mika's back-to-back World Championships, and their chapters in the history of the marque are still being written.

But if there is to be a credible and successful rear-guard action mounted by McLaren-Mercedes it must begin at Hockenheim, where Mika has often run well. Early in his career, Mika had a series of indifferent outcomes at Hockenheim: he sat out most of 1993 as McLaren's test driver (Ayrton Senna and Michael Andretti were the principal drivers) and in other seasons he had inferior equipment and finished well out of the points (the Lotus-Judd in 1991-92, the McLaren-Peugeot in 1994); in 1995, Mika was in a McLaren-Mercedes package but it was still developing.

By 1996, although the McLaren-Mercedes team was not quite yet the juggernaut it ultimately became in the 1998 and 1999 seasons, Mika qualified in fourth place but then went out on lap 13 of the 45 lap race with gearbox trouble.

In 1997 at Hockenheim, the Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher we have come to know played significant roles but took a back seat to other events that made the race a classic. Hockenheim 1997 was a good snapshot of the pre-McLaren-Mercedes era. The cars had 750 bhp and were still on slicks. Goodyear was then the dominant tire supplier with Bridgestone just beginning to make its mark. Tyrrell still existed and Stewart-Ford was years away from becoming Jaguar. Niki Lauda was then in Ferrari red, acting as avuncular advisor to his old team. Flavio Briatore still wore his trademark Korean Air/Renault baseball cap backwards but his former Championship Benetton-Renault team had not won a race since Japan in 1995. Briatore's driver, Gerhard Berger, then 37, had just lost his father in a plane crash two weeks earlier and had missed three races himself due to a sinus problem. But Berger had almost won the German Grand Prix a year earlier when his Renault engine blew up with three laps to go so he was determined to avenge that loss.

Jacques Villeneuve was driving the blue and white Williams-Renault in 1997 that had taken Damon Hill to the 1996 Championship but that team was beginning to lose its competitive edge. Villeneuve was locked in a close Championship battle with Michael Schumacher at Ferrari; going into Hockenheim, Schumacher had a four point lead over Villeneuve.

The Jordan-Peugeot team was decked out for the first year in the now-characteristic yellow livery and Eddie Jordan's two young rookies, Giancarlo Fisichella and Ralf Schumacher, were adding spice to the season.

Surprisingly, old-timer Berger put the Benetton-Renault on pole at Hockenheim 1997 and young Fisichella ended up beside him, with Hakkinen in third and Michael Schumacher right beside him in fourth place, the hint of things to come. The drama of qualifying was mirrored in the race itself. Berger held the lead through most of the race but lost it to Fisichella when he pitted on lap 34 of the 45 lap race and rejoined the race just behind the Jordan-Peugeot.

Fisichella held the lead briefly but maturely yielded to Berger who caught and passed him on fresh tires. Things then began to unravel for Fisichella (and Eddie Jordan) as their dream race turned into a nightmare. First, Fisichella lost his left rear Goodyear which exploded on the straight leading to the stadium. And then after limping back to the pits for new tires, the Jordan ultimately had to be abandoned out on the circuit on lap 40.

Meanwhile, Berger was back in front and comfortably leading over Michael Schumacher in second and Mika Hakkinen in third. With a bad set of tires, short on fuel and six laps to go, Schumacher had to pit and, again emblematic of things to come, the Ferrari strategists built a lead over the Finn of 22 plus seconds and managed to get Schumacher out of the pits just ahead of Mika Hakkinen. Schumacher's "splash and go" stop was 5.8 seconds. Hakkinen slalomed the McLaren-Mercedes over the kerbs of the chicanes and pushed as hard as he could but with Schumacher on fresh rubber and the McLaren having run a one-stop race, Mika ultimately had to settle for third place behind Michael, the first podium for McLaren-Mercedes since the first race of the season in Australia. By finishing in second, Schumacher built his lead over Villeneuve to 10 points. Villeneuve had ended his race in the gravel trap at the first chicane.

The 1997 German Grand Prix was to be Benetton-Renault's last victory and also the last of Gerhard Berger's 10 wins. Fisichella's consolation prize was that on the cool down lap he hitched a ride back to the pits on the back of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari, straddling the airbox, looking for all the world like a jockey in yellow silks riding a red prancing horse! But the die was now cast that day in 1997 at Hockenheim: Michael and Mika, side by side on the grid and later on the podium, beginning the historic rivalry that has captivated us all from that time to this.

In 1998, I happened to be at Hockenheim (see Notes From the F1 Underground, The Great Wide Open); a year after the fabulous 1997 race, the McLaren-Mercedes team had matured considerably. By Hockenheim, Mika had won five races already in the season and was six points ahead of Michael Schumacher in the Championship. In qualifying for the 1998 German Grand Prix, Hakkinen took pole, Coulthard was right beside him and Michael Schumacher was down in ninth place, his worst grid position of the season, which was put down to premature retirements in the free practice sessions, robbing the team of opportunities to work on the Ferrari.

In the race, Hakkinen put in one of his patented dominating performances, leading into the first corner under overcast skies, with teammate Coulthard tucked in behind him. Michael Schumacher had moved up to seventh on the first lap; by lap 15, Schumacher was up to fifth, a position he ultimately finished the race in which was the best he could hope for on a weekend when more than usual had gone wrong.

Meanwhile, back at the front of the grid, Mika put in a gritty drive, nursing a car that was giving him problems, while his teammate (who set fastest race lap) dogged him lap after lap but could not (or would not) mount an effort to overtake Mika. Later on, Coulthard said fluids coming out of Mika's McLaren were smearing his visor adding to the difficulties of passing. Pushing them both was Villeneuve in third place in the red and white Winfield Williams that closed up on the two McLarens as the three cars snaked through the tight stadium section. In the end, Villeneuve developed rear axle problems that caused him to back off in his pursuit of the McLarens to preserve his best finish of the season and a place on the podium.

The 1998 McLaren One-Two is a template for what Hockenheim 2001 has to be for Coulthard's Championship hopes to stay alive. Because it is such a long track and a smallish number of laps - 45 laps - it is often a one pit stop race, thus denying Ferrari the opportunity to exploit the tactical superiority the team has demonstrated time and again. In addition, in a track like Hockenheim where it is impossible to pass in the stadium complex and difficult to pass on the straights, pole position is critical and the McLarens maintaining the lead into the first corner will assure their taking control of the race.

In the 1999 Hockenheim race, Michael Schumacher was still convalescing from his Silverstone crash and Hakkinen was on a quintessential "3M" (Mika-McLaren-Mercedes) run, qualifying on pole and leading into the first corner and for the first half of the 45 lap race. Mika Salo, substituting for Michael Schumacher, qualified second in the Ferrari, ahead of Coulthard. As the race unfolded, Coulthard got stuck behind Salo, breaking his front wing on lap 9 as he got too close to the Ferrari. On lap 26, just after a fouled-up pit stop that lasted 24.3 seconds, Mika was blasting down the back straight out of the forest and into the amphitheater-like stadium complex at over 200 mph when his rear tire exploded and Mika spun around and crashed hard into the tire barrier near the Agipkurve, happily without being injured. Salo had assumed the lead from the McLaren and Mika Salo then let Eddie Irvine past for a Ferrari One, Two.

In the 2000 Hockenheim race, the McLarens were true to form in the early part of the race, running together alone at the front, Hakkinen leading Coulthard. But then the rains, together with the startling appearance of a disgruntled ex-employee of Mercedes-Benz who ran out onto the track, created sufficient disruption to cost his former employer the race and hand victory to Rubens Barrichello, his first (and only) Grand Prix win, Schumacher having been put out of the race on lap 1 because of an accident with Fisichella. Not one known to boast, Mika later said he had "one of the starts that will definitely go into the record book of my career" and had been putting in his usual formidable Hockenheim performance, qualifying in third place and running up front until the team made a bad call on pitting for rain tires, which led to Mika finishing second, ahead of Coulthard in third place. Always fast on Hockenheim's long straights, Coulthard set a new Formula One speed record that day when he recorded 224.3 mph on that straightaway just before the Jim Clark Kurve.

Going into the 2001 German Grand Prix, on the face of it, the prospects for the McLaren-Mercedes team look dim. Do The Numbers and the conclusion seems foregone: barring a total breakdown by the Ferrari team and six DNFs by Michael Schumacher, Michael wins the Drivers' Championship by a landslide, Coulthard a distant second. Only if Hakkinen and Coulthard work together to permit DC to win the remaining six races, worth 60 points, combined with both members of the BMW-Williams team and the occasional Honda-engined BAR or Jordan finishing in the points more often than not, will the season be rescued from the kind of soporific processions that all too often characterise modern Formula One.

But there is a rhythm to all things, including Formula One. And judging from the happy looks on the faces of Norbert Haug of Mercedes (relieved that he can now face the DaimlerChrysler Board members), and, of course Mika himself (exultant and even funny) after the Silverstone race, there can be no question that from here on out the full might of Mercedes-Benz will be mustered to help Hakkinen and Coulthard salvage what they can of the season and the fortunes of McLaren in a season that has been so abysmal pre-Silverstone (brain fade, ECU fade, the Newey/Jaguar fiasco, the ascent of BMW-Williams and the death of Paul Morgan).

But it will take Mika to Make it happen. And it all begins at Hakkenheim.