As Formula One slowly became about politics rather than racing, as Honda pulled out, as BMW walked away, as Bernie swiped at Max, as the ratings plummeted, as all everyone talked about was the diffuser at the back of the car, as criticism turned into catastrophe, a saviour appeared on the horizon in J.R.R. Tolkien fashion.

In the most unfortunate of circumstances, with Felipe Massa battling for his life after a freak accident, Michael Schumacher announced he would return to the racetrack. The fraternity heaved a sigh of relief — F1 was going to be the same again.

But the German seven-time world champion said this week that he would not be able to keep his date because of an old neck injury, and the sport is once again scrabbling among the debris of its economic ruin, searching desperately for a solution. For, with all due respect, Massa’s new replacement Luca Badoer is not the answer.

The most peculiar aspect of the Schumacher comeback saga was that things had become so bad that Formula One was turning for its absolution to someone who may have statistically been its greatest champion, but was unintentionally responsible for making it the drabbest, dullest spectacle in world sport.

I know I’m in danger of being lynched by an honourable member of the tifosi for saying it, but Schumacher’s cold genius perhaps did as much harm to F1 as supremo Bernie Ecclestone’s eccentricity and FIA chief Max Mosley’s authoritarianism.

There was never a rush of excitement in the gut when Schumacher raced. You admired his ability — like when he was stuck in fifth gear and still finished second at Barcelona in 1994, and when he lapped the entire field up to third place in 1996 in the rain to earn the nickname Regenmeister — but he was so busy maximising the potential of his car that the Schumacher years made us forget man and machine were not supposed to be so homogeneously interlinked.

... contd.