If you were interested in seeing history being made, wheel to wheel action, slides and spins, politics and business; if you were interested in seeing Formula One at its best and worst, then Magny Cours was the place to be last weekend. And sure enough, Atlas F1's Thomas O'Keefe was there, to bring you a report on the events that matter most

You would expect a lot from a country whose language gave us the name for our sport - Grand Prix - and this year, at least, the French Grand Prix at the Magny Cours circuit delivered. July 21st 2002 turned out to be a historic day, when Michael Schumacher pulled even with the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio in the metaphorical race across generations to determine who is the best Grand Prix driver ever.

The manner of Schumacher achieving parity with Fangio suited the occasion perfectly: far from being a coronation, Michael Schumacher had to scratch and claw and stalk and scheme to bring this crowning victory home and it was all the more satisfying that his fifth World Championship title came in such a competitive race. In short, Michael Schumacher drove like a champion, and as young and fit and determined as he is, don't be surprised if next year at Nevers he has done it again.

By now, we all know the dramatic highlights of the race: that Rubens Barrichello was unaccountably "wheels up" on the grid and was soon abandoned and forgotten; that Juan Pablo Montoya held off a stiff challenge from Schumacher's Ferrari in the early stages of the race; and that Kimi Raikkonen's McLaren took over that role when Montoya faded, and seemed headed for his first victory when the Finn skidded off at Adelaide corner just enough to let Schumacher by and could never recoup his loss and challenge for the lead in the few laps then remaining in the race.

So rather than the global view of the French Grand Prix, my report will be more local, from the Grandstands, the Paddock and the Infield.

Lycee Corner; A Learning Curve

My principal vantage point for the race was Lycee corner, the quirky, jerky last turn of the Magny-Cours circuit leading on to the pit straight that seems so out of character with the rest of the track, which is billiard table smooth and technical in nature. Lycee is to be reconfigured for next year's race and it would be a great shame if the track designers destroy one of the most unique and eccentric corners in Formula One.

What are the elements that make Lycee corner one of the best places to watch a race anywhere? I thought about it all weekend, and finally determined its special appeal: It's the Pits! You see, Lycee as a corner would on its own be interesting enough because it comes at a low point on the track after the cars have just braked from a high speed run that plunges downhill on a tricky and off-camber chicane, which figured in many incidents throughout the weekend. Lycee seems to bedevil the drivers and no two of them go through it the same way.

But just to the left of the Lycee corner is the pitlane entrance that winds its way parallel to Lycee, meaning that those in the seats called Tribune A have got it all: a great corner to watch and, when the cars pit, they pass right below the spectators amidst the bright blue and green tire barriers - and so close, that during practice sessions, the drivers wave to the crowd as they turn into the pitlane, and you can see the fuel doors open on the cars as the drivers hit the speed limiter button.

Some drivers are clinical through Lycee but most are lyrical. The Ferraris are so well balanced that by taking a wide arc on entering this tight and off camber turn, both Schumacher and Barrichello usually managed to get around the corner without fishtailing. But happily they were in the minority and most of the other drivers looked like they were competing for an award for Most Artistic Cornering Technique.

Eddie Irvine knows the Lycee corner well, having held off Mika Hakkinen there back in 1998 when Irvine was with Ferrari; his technique was to turn forcefully and kick the rear end of the Jaguar around with nearly a jolt. Jacques Villeneuve's technique was to storm the corner and fling the car around by centrifugal force and he was at his most dashing when chasing Michael Schumacher or David Coulthard, having caught them up at Lycee during practice sessions.

But for my money Coulthard gets the Lycee Corner Academy Award. Lap after lap, in one fluid motion, he would slither and slide out of the chicane and around and through Lycee in a controlled drift that was elegant to behold. Takuma Sato - who ultimately ended his race by going off at the chicane/Lycee turn - was the most exciting to watch as he attacked Lycee in the "Be On Edge" Jordan, approaching it at great speed, then noisily downshifting the high-pitched Honda engine and muscling the Jordan around the corner with that curious combination of aggression and awkwardness that characterizes many of his daring moves. Giancarlo Fisichella, in the same car, adopted Coulthard's approach and sashayed his way through Lycee in a controlled slide.

But when things got out of control for Fisichella on Saturday during practice and he went straight off into the tire barriers at Estoril corner, having damaged the aero bits and lost end plates and then his steering, it was through Lycee corner that the remains of his Jordan were towed and all of us got a close look at the carcass of what must be the umpteenth Jordan to go to the scrap heap this season. On the TV screen (Lycee has a great one, of course), you could see Jordan mechanics picking over the cadaver once it had been delivered to the garage, subjecting it to forensic analysis - the husk of the Jordan ending up as an organ donor.

Lycee was also a great spot to watch the FIA officials at work, because the FIA tower is located right above the turn. During the practice sessions, the chicane leading to Lycee had claimed several victims, some of whom missed it entirely and went into the adjacent gravel trap - some tumbled over the green concrete and bottomed out on the curb, and some got it all wrong but managed to save it without damaging the car.

Before qualifying, Charlie Whiting, the Race Director and Safety Delegate, and Herbie Blash, a fellow FIA colleague (both ex-Brabham mechanics who won Bernie Ecclestone's respect in those golden olden days and who are now entrusted with running the races), actually took a walk up to the chicane to see if all the incidents had caused any permanent damage or to see if there was something peculiarly wrong with the concrete or the red and white candy stripe kerbing that was giving drivers fits. Whiting even looked at the 100 meter marker to make sure it was not misplaced, which would throw the drivers off just that fraction of a second.

In my travels during the weekend I deserted Lycee corner for one practice session and ventured out to the Adelaide hairpin, the turn that generates most of the overtaking. Out at Adelaide a long area of concrete seats is built into the earthen hillside which parallels the Golf straightaway leading to the hairpin. It is a bit ramshackle but it has the pleasant feel of an ancient Greek open-air theater, like Epidaurus in Greece, except on a hillside and not in the round. But it is when you get down off the hillside and at track level that you can see and hear what Adelaide is all about.

If you station yourself between the 100 meter marker and the hairpin itself, you get the full appreciation of driver technique, engine noise and downshifting, as each driver arrives at the braking zone before the hairpin. The TV cameras do not pick up the pronounced downward elevation change that begins at the hairpin and the area where all the overtaking takes place. It is where Coulthard specialized in overtaking Schumacher in past years, and where Schumacher returned the favor by passing by a spinning Raikkonen for the win this year. In short, Adelaide is another magnificent turn, trickier looking in person than on TV.

Slings and Arrows

The FIA was kept plenty busy on race weekend, not only dealing with track situations but also by the off track machinations of Tom Walkinshaw's Arrows Team, which has thoroughly outdistanced the Prost and Minardi teams as the Peck's Bad Boy du jour.

In last week's installment of this saga, World Champion Niki Lauda found himself reduced to the role of bill collector, refusing in his capacity as head of Cosworth to let Arrows run the Cosworth engines without making a previously agreed upon installment payment in the millions of dollars. In this week's installment, Arrows failed to show for any of the practice sessions but apparently in an effort to avoid a technical default under the Concorde Agreement, then proceeded to direct drivers Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Enrique Bernoldi to put in a few perfunctory qualifying laps that were sufficiently slow as to fall below the 107% rule. We now have a new classification - DNWQ, Did Not Want to Qualify.

Frentzen looked forlorn in the paddock, sitting in the nearly deserted Arrows hospitality tent, consulting with counsel. The usually easy-going Bernoldi was in perpetual motion patrolling the back reaches of the paddock, working his cell phone, both of them probably wondering how their careers had come to this sorry passage: "Lost Boys", to use the name of one of the sponsors of Arrows. There were even rumors that payment by the team for a speed limit violation from a prior race had somehow not cleared banking channels. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

And for Orange, the French telecommunications company and main sponsor of Arrows, the timing could not have been worse since the Orange trademark was everywhere in this, Orange's home Grand Prix. There was trackside signage much in evidence and curiously, a lone Haute Couture TV segment sponsored by Arrows, was broadcasted on the digital TV screens showing fashion models parading down runways in Milan and Paris in dresses and spangles and beads that could easily have covered the Cosworth payment. Having dealt with Team Orders in June, the FIA will be coming to grips with Team Disorder in July.

A curious sidelight to Frentzen's situation was that when Fisichella had his accident, and since Frentzen had nothing else to do, Jordan or one of its sponsors approached Frentzen to ask if he would be available as a substitute driver for Jordan, a team that fired him last season, a matter which is still in litigation. Apparently there were misgivings on Frentzen's side that rejoining Jordan might somehow affect his ongoing litigation with Jordan, presumably by condoning prior misbehavior of the team toward Frentzen. It is sad when bankruptcy lawyers and barristers are dictating the precious and fleeting Sundays of these drivers whose careers are dying on the vine while these litigations slog through the court system.

But if on the track and in the courts Arrows was out of favor, the stationary three-seater Arrows mock-up in the infield was a big hit with the fans and provided those who waited in line with a virtual driving experience by means of a full face helmet and a heads-up display. Michelin also had a popular infield facility that combined two features: a fabulous six-minute 3-D virtual Formula One race film called "Spirit of the Race" with stunning and imaginative special effects, and a Pit Stop Challenge competition where audience members were chosen to come up on stage, suit up and try their hands at being a pit crew member of two cars on stage.

One of the other "infield" attractions of Magny-Cours that is not to be missed is the Ligier Formula One team museum on the grounds of the circuit, that has all those Ligier with which Jacques Laffitte almost won Championships, along with the Ligier Olivier Panis drove to victory at Monaco, and the more recent Prost Grand Prix cars. In fact, there were so many Prosts laying about that I began to wonder if the Ligier museum had bought all the cars at the Prost liquidation sale, or whether these cars were simply hiding out in the French countryside, safe from Alain Prost's creditors.

Nearby the three-seater Arrows and Michelin attractions, were the "Official Merchandise" booths, teeming with people seeking a souvenir of some kind to remind them that they were here That Day. Michael Schumacher paraphernalia is now so abundant that he has his own separate stand next to Ferrari's!

The Perfumed Stockade and the Celebration

And back in the paddock, Schumacher's celebrity status was on display as Will He or Won't He was the topic on everyone's tongues. The Magny-Cours paddock is a split-level affair that gives it a strangely disconnected feel, with the upper level being the working part of the paddock with the trucks backed up to the garages and the lower level being the repository of the team motorhomes and hospitality centers. The two levels are connected by a small and narrow staircase of perhaps 10 steps under an awning through which all must pass. The foot of that staircase became the crossroads of the paddock and chief milling around place, with McLaren's "Ron's World" sitting across from the red Ferrari motorhomes, the epicenter of Formula One's Neversland.

Because of the split-level configuration and the narrow staircase, a "perp walk" atmosphere developed in the upper level of the paddock as the photographers all lined up for shots of the drivers coming from the hospitality area up the staircase. A "perp walk" for the uninitiated is the one opportunity the media has to film or photograph a celebrity - the perpetrator - being led to and from the courthouse during a trial that for whatever reason has generated public interest. An imperfect analogy, perhaps, but you get the idea.

Most drivers stolidly made their way up the stairs either by themselves or with the wives or advisers, dutifully signing autographs on the run. But even here, Schumacher has the edge as he declined to run the gauntlet but developed a novel approach to the problem of how to get from Point A to Point B: he went to and from the Ferrari garage area by a motorized scooter, sailing through the paddock around astonished passersby before they even knew he was there - the mark of a Champion.

In any event, even the not-easily-impressed Juan Pablo Montoya could not fail to be amazed that Michael Schumacher finally pulled it off, winning the Big One with the kind of skill and luck that has marked Schumacher's career. It is difficult enough to win just one World Championship - just ask Stirling Moss or France's own Jacques Laffitte who both knocked on the door more than once. But the variables are so many and the odds so great against it, that Schumacher's ability to amass five titles must surely show he is something special, even if he is not Fangio or Nuvolari or Clark.

Did I feel - as I watched Jean Todt grab Corinna Schumacher by the hand after the race and run off to where Michael was finishing his FIA press conference to greet him - that I was back in 1957, participating in history as I imagined those around Fangio must have felt when he achieved his fifth title? No, I can't say I did, but there was something special in the air that day in the beautiful French countryside, an inevitability that something important would happen that day to a person who is some kind of race car driver by any measure, and who - in his 11 years in the sport - has shaped it in his own image. I am glad I was there this year to see it in the flesh, and I will probably be back at the new Lycee corner next year to see if he can do it again.

Never Say Never in Nevers.