By Jonathan Legard BBC motor racing correspondent

If Mika Hakkinen stayed in to watch the German Grand Prix at his holiday retreat near Helsinki, he could only have congratulated himself on his decision to turn his back on Formula One.

Hakkinen announces retirement

Michael Schumacher's first victory in red at Hockenheim suited the huge home crowd but to the world at large, it was no contest.

Hakkinen's old friends and colleagues at McLaren were never in the race after Kimi Raikkonen lost out to Juan Pablo Montoya in their early, feisty seven-corner skirmish.

I want to spend more time with my family and watch them grow

Mika Hakkinen

Hakkinen won 20 F1 Grands Prix

Probably not Schumacher, whom Hakkinen reprimanded afterwards for blocking a similar move a couple of laps earlier.

And who would disagree with Ron Dennis, Hakkinen's boss at McLaren, that his finest performance came in the 1998 Japanese Grand Prix where he scorched to victory to rout Schumacher and claim his first world title?

His qualifying lap to close out his key rival at Monaco in 1999 was equally impressive.

And so many times he played Schumacher at his own game, with a series of startling laps before diving into the pits en route to one of his 20 victories.

Schumacher also met his match when trying to score points in their psychological battles.

The Finn never rose to the bait, either feigning an inability to understand the question or flat-batting inquiries with a quizzical shrug and a nondescript answer.

Maddening for the media keen to play up any conflict but perfect to baffle and frustrate the German.

Schumacher probably misses him. Hakkinen was serious competition in a seriously effective car.

When Hakkinen was on his mettle - for example at Silverstone and Indianapolis last year when it was the champion combination of old - he was unstoppable.

Raikkonen replaced Hakkinen at McLaren

But the catalogue of McLaren cock-ups and failures in 2001 drove him into retirement as much as his sense of self preservation.

"I don't want to hurt myself any more," he revealed in his touching video message confirming his F1 farewell last Friday.

"I've enjoyed so much in my life, it's not worth pushing my luck further.

"I want to spend more time with my family and watch them grow."

How many Grand Prix drivers, let alone champions, have admitted that?

After the horror of his crash in Adelaide which almost killed him in 1995, Hakkinen was more aware than most of the risks he took each time he lowered himself into the cockpit.

But for an ill-timed Mercedes engine failure at the US Grand Prix in 2000, Hakkinen, not Schumacher, could have been Formula One's hat-trick hero.

Instead, history shows that Hakkinen failed and Schumacher never looked back.

Unlike many of his champion predecessors, Hakkinen knew when to stop. He has earned his place in the sun.

F1 now waits for Montoya, Ralf Schumacher, Coulthard or even Raikkonen to be given the same quality equipment Hakkinen enjoyed to take the fight to Michael Schumacher once more.