Just over 63 laps into a dull Spanish Grand Prix the McLaren garage was beginning to celebrate. A carefully conceived and immaculately paced run of laps by Mika Hakkinen had thrust the Finn into the lead as he blitzed Michael Schumacher in his second pit stop, turning a one and a half second deficit into a four-second advantage.

With Schumacher suffering tyre problems and slowing, Hakkinen was undoubtedly back. A lap and a half to go. Ten points in the bag. Championship ignition waiting.

But as the McLaren crew downed tools and prepared to take to the pit wall to watch the twice world champion drive towards them in celebration, Hakkinen's wife Erja suddenly covered her face in her hands and shut her eyes. On the pit wall, a grim-faced Ron Dennis stared at the screens in front of him, not believing what he was seeing Hakkinen, grinding down from 180 m.p.h. to 80 and then as a thin spiral of mist fanned into a plume of smoke from an exploding clutch, the Finn gave up whatever hope he had of nursing the stricken car to victory and pulled over. Ten points gone. Schumacher sweeping home to a shock win. Championship ignition aborted.

Schumacher pulled his victorious Ferrari into parc ferme and climbing from the car, shook off hands guiding him toward the podium. Contritely, he made his way back to where Hakkinen was alighting from a rescue vehicle, put a consoling arm around the Finn's shoulder and apologised.

"I simply said I was sorry and apologised," he said from the winner's chair in the post-race press conference. "It belongs to him to be sitting here. He hasn't made any mistakes and it's very hard for him."

All the harder because McLaren had taken Schumacher and Ferrari apart in the day's only viable overtaking area, the pits. After failing to make an impression on pole-winner Schumacher at the start and then losing out with a slow first pit stop that put him, at one stage, four seconds down on the championship leader, Hakkinen regrouped and began the charge back. When Schumacher made his second stop he rejoined 20 second adrift of Hakkinen, not enough for the Finn to stop and get out ahead.

But aided by a longer stint, the need to take on less fuel and a passage of blistering quick laps Hakkinen built the gap to 24 seconds, pitted and emerged to see Schumacher embroiled in a battle through traffic some five seconds back.

The Finn's re-entry into the championship tussle was a racing cert. Except, this is Formula One racing and as the paddock mantra goes: to finish first you first have to finish.

"I'm obviously hugely disappointed, not only for me but for the whole team," said Hakkinen. "I couldn't believe it when it happened. I think it was a clutch problem as I just lost drive, no matter what gear I selected. I was going up the hill at the time and there was no way I was going to get the car to the finish. It's difficult to describe how I feel and I don't think it will sink in until later."

Schumacher was joined on the podium yesterday by 2000 Indy 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya of Williams who stole into second and his first points of this season yesterday and also by third-placed Jacques Villeneuve, the BAR driver picking up his first podium finish since Hungary 1998 and his first points of the season.

With Jarno Trulli taking fourth after being hampered by a pit stop mistake, fifth went to David Coulthard, the Scot battling through the whole field after stalling on the pre-race formation lap and also coping with an unscheduled stop after losing his front wing in a first-lap clash with Arrows Enrique Bernoldi.