Last year, the good citizens of Maranello climbed from their beds in the early hours of an October morning to tune in flickering TV sets, push fluttering butterflies down low into nerve-wracked stomachs and chew nails to the quick as Michael Schumacher took to the track in Suzuka for the final race of the season and a do or die, head-to-head battle with McLaren's Mika Hakkinen for the right to call himself world champion, for the prize of Ferrari's first drivers' title in 21 years.

Yesterday, four races from the end of the season, as Schumacher metronomically counted down 77 laps of soporific racing to take victory and his second consecutive title, the good citizens of Ferrari's hometown were probably enjoying a Sunday afternoon snooze.

Despite Schumacher's protestation that it this was a fight right to the end, this year's Formula One championship was an all too one-sided affair. Indeed, taking the laurels with four races left to run gives the lie to the notion that this was a contest of equals.

And if the theory needs proving, the Hungarian Grand Prix was enough. On Saturday, despite the shapes being thrown by McLaren's David Coulthard, Schumacher used just half his allotted 12 laps to imperiously claim pole position with eight tenths to spare over the Scot and his Mercedes-powered machine and with the luxury of two runs in hand should Coulthard have found anything remotely like a challenge in his McLaren's limited arsenal.

"Why waste the effort," said a perplexed Schumacher afterwards when he was questioned about his tactic of remaining in the garage during the last 20 minutes of the qualifying hour.

And when it came time to make the effort, to engage his own gears and turn the wheels of his mental, physical and motorised machinery, Schumacher contrived made it look effortless.

Blessed with the clean side of the dusty Hungaroring track, he left second-placed Coulthard spluttering in a rooster-tail of dust, turned into the first corner with his lead intact amd his partner Rubens Barrichello installed as shotgun rider, and set off to beat out a relentless unwavering victory tattoo that hardly varied in tempo over the entire distance.

He missed the beat just twice, surrendering his lead in his two pit stops, but even then they were minor syncopations, counterpoints played until Coulthard and Barrichello pitted and handed the celebratory rhythm back to the drum major.

And so it has been all season. From his comprehensive opening victories in Australia and Malaysia, where with two simply-orchestrated blows he forced McLaren into the painful realisation that their MP4-16 was not the retaliatory weapon they had hoped for, to his irresistible win in Hungary yesterday, Schumacher has demonstrated that he stands not only head and shoulders above his peers but has now lifted himself up to the level of the sport's true greats.

In claiming the earliest championship win since Nigel Mansell took the title with five races remaining in 1992 - though, coincidentally, the Englishman was also crowned in Hungary - Schumacher now joins Alain Prost on four championships, just one behind the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio.

He equals Prost's all-time record of 51 grand prix wins. With four races left, 43 points clear of Coulthard, and 40 left to claim, Schumacher could yet beat Mansell's 1992 record of a 52-point margin of victory.

But while Schumacher is forcing himself onto a new pedestal in the pantheon, he is being propelled by a combination of Ferrari's technical domination and the collapse of any sustained threat from outside.

Aside from McLaren and a reawakening Williams, assaults from other quarters are non-existent. It is hard to see the championship becoming anything other than a three-way battle in the future, given the troubles afflicting Honda's twin forces of BAR and Jordan, the slow rebuilding processes occurring at Benetton-Renault and the stumbling "progress" being made by Ford with Jaguar.

But even that three-way battle is rigged in Ferrari's favour by weaknesses in the opposing corners. Since Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard conspired to take a vastly superior MP4-13 to a comprehensive double title win in 1998, McLaren have been a wavering force.

Hakkinen duplicated his drivers' title win in 1999, but Ferrari took the constructors' consolation prize by four points. Last year they won it by 18 points and this year the margin could be anything up to 132 points. While it is hardly likely that neither McLaren will finish the last four races and the Ferraris will finish one-two in each race, the point that McLaren are currently a spent force, both in terms of technical invention and driver reliability, is well illustrated.

Williams too will need to make significant strides during the winter if they are to mount a challenge. While Ralf Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya and the BMW-powered FW23 have shown flashes of real potential this year, the team has been hampered by unreliability, driver error on the part of Montoya and the steep gradient of the learning curve tyre supplier Michelin is attempting to negotiate.

The truth is that the 2001 version of Schumacher/Ferrari is a peerless machine. And the superiority of its design, the irresitibility of its invention and application is likely to pertain for some time to come.

Yesterday, as he ground out a long, slow, final lap to his fourth championship win, Schumacher's voice crackled through to his team on the pit wall. "I don't have the right words but you have been simply amazing," he said. "We all won it. It is so lovely to work with you. You're simply the best."

There is nothing and nobody in Formula One now capable of denying it.