Schumacher is simply the best

There can be no misunderstanding when Eddie Irvine wants to get a message across.

The Jaguar driver, pitlane playboy and former team mate of Ferrari's Michael Schumacher has never been one to mince his words.

And his line of thought leading up to next Sunday's British Formula One Grand Prix is as clear as daylight: Forget the championship, it's already over.

Irvine believes Schumacher is on another planet from the rest of the grid and is on his way to smashing all records as the best driver the sport has ever seen.

"I haven't seen (McLaren's) David (Coulthard) or anybody beating Michael since the start of the year," Irvine said in an interview at the French Grand Prix last week.

"The only thing that is going to beat Michael is a reliability issue and Ferrari don't have reliability issues. (Technical director) Ross Brawn sees to that.

"Michael is in a different league.

"The championship is over. But DC (Coulthard) will keep trying, he is a trier you have got to give him that."

Schumacher is well on his way to collecting his fourth world title this season and has won six of the 10 races so far in 2001 to take his career tally to 50, one behind Alain Prost's all-time record.

He leads Coulthard by 31 points in the title race with seven grands prix remaining. The Scot has won twice this year, with Ralf Schumacher of Williams also a double winner.

POLE RECORD

The German has also been on pole position seven times for a career total of 39, still well off Brazilian Ayrton Senna's record haul of 65.

But Irvine said that landmark, one of the few Schumacher does not have within his sights this season, was not out of his reach eventually.

"He will obliterate the records," he said. "There is a good chance he will beat Senna's pole record if he keeps racing. The reason he has not beaten Senna's qualifying record is because he has never been in the quickest car.

"If you look, he has really only had the best car this year. He is the best there is -- but I would have said that about him three or four years ago.

"If you look at Senna or Prost, they were outqualified more by their team mates than Michael has been by his and he has had bloody good team mates," added the Briton.

"Rubens (Barrichello) is good, I am good, Nelson Piquet and (Martin) Brundle were good. The guy is something else as a driver. He turns the steering wheel better, he brakes better, he accelerates better than anyone else.

"He has just got an innate ability to drive a car better than anyone else," he added.

"That does not mean he has got the highest IQ or is the best at setting up the car but it is just natural ability.

"Michael for sure is the best driver out there and Barrichello is nowhere near him. I think Rubens might be underperforming a bit now because maybe it is getting to him a bit but Michael is in a different league."

BIG BREAK

Irvine, number two to Schumacher in his four years at Ferrari, was runner-up in the 1999 championship after the German broke his leg at Silverstone.

Schumacher's pain was literally Irvine's big break, although he still insists on seeing that race as the one that lost him the championship through a bungled pit stop rather than the one that opened it up for him.

The Jaguar driver, now 35 and the second oldest man in Formula One, also recognised that Schumacher was not everyone's cup of tea in the paddock with his swerving starts.

He has voiced fears that such tactics could spark a serious accident at the front of the grid if an aggressive driver does not back off, as his brother Ralf did at the Nuerburgring last month.

But in Irvine's view, the scales still came down heavily on the German's side.

"A lot of people go against him because they don't like him and I am not saying I am a big fan as a person or of some of the tactics he gets up to but, as a steering wheel attendant, he is second to none," he said.

Irvine, winner of four races at Ferrari, said he had some regrets at never having had a truly dominant car to drive but would not have wanted to win a world title based solely on his car's supremacy.

"For sure I would have liked to have been at Williams or been in an Adrian Newey car," he said. "Ferrari was a bad car for a lot of years and in 1999 it was still a bad car, you could see they were miles off.

"But it's a bit of a hollow world championship," he said, referring to Briton Damon Hill's 1996 victory. "You can stick your name on it and stick it on the wall but you know the true story.

"Damon did a reasonable job in a year when he had a rookie as a team mate and he had by far the best car. Good luck to him. He won the world championship, hats off to him.

"But personally I would not be sitting there feeling chuffed with myself and he probably isn't really chuffed with himself. Damon is honest enough to know the true story."

For Irvine, despite securing Ford-owned Jaguar's first ever podium with a third place in Monaco, success this year seems as unlikely as Schumacher slipping up.

But next season, the last under his current contract at Jaguar, is another matter.

"If I finish last in every race this year, I don't care as long as I have a race-winning car next year," he said. "That's the way I see it."