Michael Schumacher is F1's most successful driver, but do his tactics and ethics still make him a Grand Prix legend?

Back in the Nineties there was a hit film called Awakenings. It starred Robert De Niro and it told the true story of a man who wakes up after being in a coma from a sleeping sickness for over 20 years. We see him rejoice as he experiences the full rush of life, but then the sickness returns. The scene where he is put back to bed, still awake, but knowing he will be returning to a sleeping prison forever is one of the most anguished you'll ever see.

And it's what sprang to mind when Schumacher gave his retirement speech at Monza. I watched this man, responsible for so many unbelievable racing moments, say his farewells, and then that kid Kubica, who'd come third, trotted out one of those inane lift- music-style speeches about his tyres being okay. I think this was the Awakenings moment for me.

Schumacher is one of that breed of super drivers that sprang up in the '80s and '90s - the Sennas, Prosts, Mansells and Piquets - who thought their own thoughts, spoke their minds and were completely in control of their own actions. When they raced they gave us the full spectrum - passion, fury, villainy, genius, mischief, balls-ups - the lot. They were showmen worth watching and now the last of that breed is about to walk away, and as a result Formula One will become more somnambulant.

It's easy to cast Schumacher as villain. Drivers such as Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart point to all his low-down unsporting moments - Adelaide '94, Jerez '97, and Monaco this year - as evidence that he can never be ranked with the great champions of the past who had much higher moral standards.

And it's true that generations ago, the racing was more gentlemanly. Moss himself threw away his one chance of being world champion because he wouldn't protest the points tally of his rival, Mike Hawthorn.

Then you had Peter Collins surrendering his car - and his own chance of a world championship - to Fangio mid-race, so that his senior teammate could win the title. They were sportsmen in the purest sense of the word, but you can't compare Schumacher's behaviour to theirs, any more than you can compare the cars of now and then.

Those drivers raced in an era that, like the telly of the time, was black and white. Appearance was everything, emotions were clamped down, and society, rather than the individual, was the dominant force in deciding peoples' conduct.

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