Two weeks ago Mika Hakkinen crouched amidst the forests of Monza weeping bitter tears over the missed chance his 11th pole of the season had given him. Heinz-Harald Frentzen capitalised, sweeping into championship contention with his second win of the year.

Eddie Irvine consolidated, scraping a point to level the title race with Hakkinen on 60 points and David Coulthard battled for a couple of points that leave him an outside chance of lifting the F1 crown. Three races left. Two contenders had become four. You could almost hear the clicking as the pressure on the world champion was ratcheted up another notch.

The drama queens went into overdrive. Eddie Irvine, testing at Fiorano last week, crowed that he had suddenly been given the best Ferrari all season.

Eddie Jordan played down his charge's chances before tipping a nod, a wink and, aided by Jordan technical director Mike Gascoyne, the theory that "of course, anything can happen" and that a revamped 199 was now "close to the McLaren's, wet or dry."

McLaren's Ron Dennis insisted that team orders may be introduced between his two drivers, despite an oft-professed loathing for such tactics and David Coulthard immediately ruled them out, while still remaining careful enough to give his team-mate his full support, should it be needed.

In the midst of all the shouting one voice was conspicuously absent: the man whose public show of private emotion had sparked this latest furious round of chest beating, tub thumping and panic in the streets of Woking. Hakkinen was missing in action.

A period of reflection? A re-evaluation of his championship chances?

Whatever Mika Hakkinen spent the last two weeks doing it seems to have worked. The joint championship leader arrived at the Nurburgring yesterday to begin preparations for the European Grand Prix looking relaxed, confident and remarkably unperturbed that seated around him at the regular FIA press conference were the wolves who have been circling his wagon this last few weeks.

"I feel all right," he said. "I'm sure I would have felt happier if the last grand prix had ended differently. But it has been a new challenge. After all, our car is extremely strong. We had some good testing last week in Magny Cours and so I am confident and feeling ver very pleased."

However, although Hakkinen may feel that the pressure is not affecting him, the dreaded imposition of team orders, so vehemently opposed by team manager Ron Dennis after his drivers' altercation at the first corner at Spa, still looms large in the team's European Grand Prix plans. This time the Finn was a little more nervous:

"Jeez, I knew someone would ask this. It's not easy to give an answer," he sighed. "You know what the rule is at McLaren: the two drivers are equal and we both fight to the maximum. But it depends on the situation, because things change."

Since Monza, things have definitely changed but Hakkinen would not be drawn and insisted he would have to wait until after qualifying before any decision is made. If fishing through Hakkinen's equivocations was proving a futile exercise, then more clues were perhaps to be gleaned from his team-mate's reply as to whether team orders would prejudice his own championship chances.

"Not really, no, because at the beginning of the season I had dropped down the points and I wasn't involved in the fight for the championship," said the Scot, his leonine roaring of the past few weeks suddenly achieving lamblike meekness.

"It has only been in the second half of the season that I have come back with any hope of contesting the championship.

"But," he added, "I am in with a shout. If I win this weekend my chances will be looking good. If I don't win, it's not looking good. It's pure logic. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out the mathematical possibilities. I'm 12 points behind Mika and Eddie, and I would say that Mika has the better chance because he's a better driver than Eddie, sorry, I mean he has a better car."

Amidst the guffaws, all eyes turned to Irvine, but the Ferrari driver merely shrugged and stared impassively into space.

"Not a lot has changed," he said. "It's just to us to start performing well again. And I think we can do that this weekend. We are away from the low downforce circuits again and even if we hadn't made changes to the car I think we could have performed well here.

"So, I think our competitiveness would have come back anyway. Instead we have been working hard. I did five days of testing last week and I think we have made progress thanks to some new aerodynamic parts. I'm very optimistic."

While Hakkinen and Irvine clutched their cards close and poker-faced tried to up the ante, Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Eddie Jordan's "dark horse on the rails," sat back fanned the deck and contemplated the chances of palming himself another ace.

"The fact is," he said, "we'll be racing this weekend on a track whose characteristics are very different from the recent ones. The Nurburgring requires a lot of downforce and we have been a little bit worse this year on high downforce tracks. Ferrari will be strong here and I don't expect Eddie to have the set-up problems he had in Monza.

"So, our chances of being on the front row are a lot less than they were in Monza," he added, before slipping in a rider. "But, we have been working on the car too, and after trying new bits at Magny Cours, the car seems to be a bit better here than it was in high downforce configuration at other circuits."

Delivered as it has been all season. An arched eyebrow, an inscrutable half smile and the knowledge that maybe, just maybe, what is at the moment a 10 point gap may just thin out by the time the circus goes to Sepang.