James Lawton: Gifted and ruthless soul of Formula One, where winning, fair or foul, is everything

Schumacher is going out as he came in - a driver of genius and absolute nerve

It is entirely typical of Michael Schumacher that at the time when he is supposed to let go, sated like no champion in the history of his sport, a unique hunger to win remains etched on a face that, as far as any camouflaging of remaining ambition goes, still might be as bare as a skull.

If anyone had doubted how much the fire still burnt, even on the day he officially announced his retirement, there was more than the evidence of mere body language after his stunning fifth triumph at Monza and the dramatic enhancement of his chances of winning an eighth world title.

After drawing within two points of his young Spanish pretender and reigning world champion Fernando Alonso, Schumacher spoke of the need for a graceful exit at the end of all the good days - then said he would be 100 per cent focused on the last three "wins" of the season. Not the last three races, the last three wins. It was no doubt a slip of the tongue but as far as the 25-year-old Alonso was concerned it was one that might have belonged to a viper.

That certainly was the reality that Formula One chose to obscure if not totally banish in a stream of honeyed tributes to mark the impending end of an era of utterly ruthless domination by the 37-year-old from a little town near Cologne. The consensus, though, was implicit enough in every phrase of commendation: Schumacher will fight as never before to leave what has always been for him not a playground but a theatre of war as the master of all he surveys. It is not a choice but a compulsion and for the Ferrari tifosi who gathered like a medieval army to salute again their "spiritual" leader it is perhaps the ultimate glory.

The truth, it could not have been more evident yesterday, is that Schumacher is going out precisely as he came in - a driver of genius and absolute nerve and one for whom such considerations as the welfare of his rivals, even if they included his brother Ralf, were utterly secondary to his greatest, indeed at times it seemed, his only imperative - the one to win.

Keen eyes at trackside noted that after emotional celebration with key mechanics and team members there was a subtle but perceptible cooling of Schumacher's elation when he was embraced by the Ferrari chairman, Luca di Montezemolo. This inevitably triggered fresh suspicion that Schumacher had been made fretful by the Italian team's rush to sign Kimi Raikkonen and the sense that his own vast aura had become subordinate to Ferrari's urge to define their future.

In the end, as Schumacher came to the finish a conqueror again - it was his 90th grand prix victory - such outside factors were transparently academic. The more you thought about it the more obvious it became; Schumacher's last race was always going to be as intense as his first.

Whether or not he leaves with eight world titles - three more than Juan Fangio, who for many romantics is still the ultimate driver of grace and passion - is immaterial to the essence of the Schumacher legacy. An eighth win would merely emphasise the unbreakable thrust of his nature. Long ago history's verdict was delivered: Schumacher, even more than Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian who turned the challenge of the track into a mystical, almost religious vocation - was the man who would do anything to win, fair or foul.

The "dark places" which Schumacher's former team-mate Johnny Herbert referred to fleetingly yesterday, have been documented thoroughly. In 1994 Schumacher drove his world title rival Damon Hill off the track in Adelaide - and three years later he did the same to Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez. The authorities were, naturally, essentially compliant. Schumacher was not a dangerous maverick - he was the heart of what Formula One had long become, a tough and cynical business where success bred on success and when losing drove you to the wall.

That capacity of Schumacher to do the unthinkable, to scandalise even a pit lane where the least obsessed drivers could define in a nanosecond the meaning of the word amoral when applied to racing, has been as unflagging as his need to win. Indeed, there have been times when they have become undistinguishable, as we saw earlier this season at Monaco when he remained almost comically unrepentant after parking his car on the track in a patent attempt to sabotage qualifying once he had acquired another pole position. Shock at such outrages has always had a shelf-life so much inferior to the force of Schumacher's annexation of a "sport" which was once brutally categorised by the former grand prix winner John Watson.

Shortly before the start at Monza 30 years ago, Watson pointed to the chicane and said, "There in a minute or two the most talented drivers in the world will turn en masse into a bunch of hoodlums." That was the race where Niki Lauda was abused by the tifosi, for a perceived decline of nerve, a few weeks after narrowly escaping death at the Nürburgring. Perhaps such memories illuminated yesterday's ferocious bond between the tifosi and Schumacher. Maybe here was the ultimate recognition that Schumacher was their man, the expression of their belief that any niceties of their sport, which were so easily produced by men like Fangio and his great rival Stirling Moss, and then later the likes of Jim Clark and Sir Jackie Stewart, ran a poor second to the requirement to win.

But then when of all it is said, it is impossible to detach Schumacher from his environment. At least one of his victims, Villeneuve, has suggested that the German indeed had passed a point where his conduct could be reasonably accepted. This was censure from a weighty source, a world champion of high intelligence and independent thought.

But of course Schumacher drove on, undisturbed by criticism, the creator of his own world - one from which he escaped from time to time to be with his family and play an accomplished game of football with his friends in Switzerland, but with never a hint that the edge of his ambition had dulled.

A few years ago, when he was reflecting on the course of his career and its future, he was asked how often he thought about the time when it would all be over. "I do not think about it because it is not relevant now," he replied. "I believe I can still do the job as well as I want to and it will only be when I have any reason to doubt that statement that I will even think about quitting."

Schumacher was sitting beneath chandeliers in the big hotel at the top of the hill in Monaco and for those present it was as though they had been admitted to a throne room. Yesterday the reign was supposed to be over, but everything he did and said made a nonsense of the idea. Abdication, you had to be sure, will be the hardest thing he will ever do.