The search is on for F1 No.2

The Formula One season ended at the Brazilian Grand Prix at Sao Paulo on Sunday, and there is still no doubt who is the best driver in the world. But who is second best?

The domination of Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari team over the last half-decade has not only made it more difficult for many fans to know, it has also blinded team owners trying to find a driver capable of beating Schumacher.

Although Rubens Barrichello, the other Ferrari driver, returned to his home race second in the series, he continues to have difficulties.

After winning the Italian and the Chinese Grand Prixs in September, he qualified 15th and then crashed out in Japan two weeks ago, while Schumacher took the pole and the victory.

Barrichello said he wanted to win in Sao Paulo, but did well to finish; in 11 visits, he has failed to finish the race 10 times, coming in fourth in 1994. Schumacher, of Germany, has won four times, finished second or third six times, fifth once and not at all once.

Yet Barrichello remains optimistic. "I will quit if I think Michael is better than me; I am just as fast," he said in the German magazine Bild am Sonntag last week.

"I used to be very emotional in the car, but now I am as cool as a cucumber - just like Michael." Barrichello has been faster than Schumacher several times this season, but his race strategy has often let him down.

And no sooner did his role as second fiddle end - when Schumacher won the title in August - than Barrichello started winning.

Schumacher's achievements - especially his 83 career victories - have overshadowed those of Barrichello, who is the fourth most victorious driver currently racing, with nine career victories.

David Coulthard and Jacques Villeneuve have 13 and 11, but their epochs appear to have come and gone. By comparison, the third-place driver in the series, Jenson Button, has yet to win a race in his five Formula One seasons.

After he joined BAR-Honda last year, he was coddled, and he has scored 10 top-three finishes. Button's emergence wiped out last year's contenders, Juan Pablo Montoya, at BMW-Williams, and Kimi Raikkonen, at McLaren-Mercedes.

Montoya, of Colombia, considered a serious Schumacher challenger since he started in Formula One in 2001 -after winning just about every series he raced in - has had mixed results, winning only three races in four years.

More consistency

And although Raikkonen challenged Schumacher for the title until the last race last season -with only one victory, but more consistency - this year began disastrously for him, with multiple engine breakdowns, and he did not win a race until the Belgian Grand Prix in August.

The victory in Brazil last year at first went to Raikkonen, but analysis of the circuit's timing system revealed that Giancarlo Fisichella was the winner.

Fisichella's first career victory came thanks to an accident that ended the race 15 laps before the finish. Fisichella happened to have the lead at the time, though his Jordan most likely would not have held it. Nevertheless, Fisichella, an Italian who began Formula One racing in 1996, had recently been voted best driver by his competitors.

The accident that gave him his victory involved two of the other rising stars, Fernando Alonso, at Renault, and Mark Webber, at Jaguar. Last year, Alonso won his first race, the Hungarian Grand Prix, and even before that his team was calling him the next Schumacher.

But this year Alonso, of Spain, was overshadowed by his teammate Jarno Trulli, who won the Monaco Grand Prix in May - and was fired from the team in September.

Webber, of Australia, who started at Minardi in 2002, will move from Jaguar to Williams next year thanks to an immense reputation for speed and intelligence. Yet his best result in three seasons remains the fifth place he earned in his first race, the Australian Grand Prix in 2002.

Meanwhile, Formula One team owners ignore Sebastien Bourdais, the Frenchman who won the Formula 3000 championship in 2002 before moving to the Championship Auto Racing Teams series in the United States.

In Surfers Paradise, Australia, on Sunday, in the series' penultimate race, Bourdais, 25, needed only 8 more points than his teammate Bruno Junqueira to become the third youngest driver to win the series in its 25-year history.

Bourdais has won six races and seven poles this season, and qualified in the top three a record 13 straight times. That he has not found a Formula One team is not only unfortunate for Bourdais and for fans who want to see Schumacher challenged, but also for France.

The Brazilian Grand Prix was the first Formula One race since 1966 without a French driver, as Olivier Panis retired from the sport after the last race.

It may be impossible to know whether Bourdais or any other driver is second best in the world, or even capable of beating Schumacher, until they have as good a car as Schumacher's, and equal treatment by the team.

As Formula One teams continue to hire drivers with less interesting career results and to ignore these new young drivers, Schumacher continues to dominate.

On the other hand, last Wednesday, Williams' effort to hire Button away from BAR failed, rejected by Formula One's contracts recognition board, which said BAR had the legal right to keep Button. That means Williams has another chance to hire a Schumacher beater, and the team said it would announce its choice "in due course."