Alonso's flawless display offers glimpse of future

When Michael Schumacher looked in his rearview mirrors on the 62nd lap of his brutally disappointing Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday, he saw the future arriving at a rate of knots. It was carried along in the blue-and-yellow fuselage of a Renault driven with tremendous panache by the youngest man ever to win a Formula One world championship encounter. At 22 years and 26 days, Fernando Alonso out-pointed the 1952 Indianapolis 500 winner, Troy Ruttman (22 years 80 days), and the 1959 US Grand Prix winner, Bruce McLaren (22 years 104 days), and wrote himself into the history books.

It's not the first time that the reigning champion has been operating at close quarters with the Spanish sensation in 2003. At both Silverstone and Hockenheim he had plenty of time to study the young driver's form, especially when he was edging him on to the grass at the former. But this was the first time that Schumacher had ever suffered the indignity of being lapped by Alonso. It may not be the last.

Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen, the two drivers who have pounced on to Schumacher's back like jackals on a donkey in one of the most riveting title fights seen in years, are rightly recognised as megastars of the future. Men who will take the fight to Schumacher. But the real cognoscenti believe that Alonso is the new man who will go all the way and become the yardstick by which the others are judged once the grand master is finally ready to hang up his helmet.

The Williams-BMWs had the speed to win on Sunday and, indeed, should have done precisely that. There was an element of misfortune in the fact that both Ralf Schumacher and Montoya, second and fourth fastest in qualifying, had to start from the dirty, righthand side of the grid. That made their cars slow away and left them swamped at the start. But both compounded that with silly errors.

Schumacher got flustered and spun in the second corner, condemning himself to the need to fight back to fourth place. Had he won, as he should have, he could now have 63 points in his own title quest.

Montoya spun when under no pressure whatsoever on lap 62, and very nearly squandered the six points he scored that have hoisted him within a point of Schumacher Snr.

Alonso, by contrast, did not make a single error. By his own admission he was able to control the pace with 50 of the 70 laps still to go, such was the value of his start and his own driving, plus Mark Webber's interference role when running second for Jaguar in the first 14 laps.

Yet again 2003 threw up another gripping grand prix with a great result. Alonso became the eighth different race winner of the season, in dramatic contrast to 2002. You have to go back to 1983 to match that, courtesy of Nelson Piquet, John Watson, Alain Prost, Patrick Tambay, Keke Rosberg, Michele Alboreto, Rene Arnoux and Riccardo Patrese, or to 1985 with Prost, Ayrton Senna, Elio de Angelis, Alboreto, Rosberg, Piquet, Niki Lauda and Nigel Mansell.

To beat it you need to go to 1982, when Prost, Lauda, Didier Pironi, Watson, Patrese, Piquet, Arnoux, Tambay, de Angelis, Rosberg and Alboreto did the winning.

With Montoya, Raikkonen and Schumacher Jnr currently flourishing, and David Coulthard and Rubens Barrichello still capable of turning it on in the right circumstances, the prospects of one driver dominating currently seem thankfully remote. However, in Alonso's breakthrough win there were the signs that, in the future, he could be every bit as capable of putting a lock on victory as Schumacher was last season.