Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn wants Rubens Barrichello to finish second in the F1 drivers’ championship, but Michael Schumacher will not hand the Brazilian any victories.
Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn wants Rubens Barrichello to finish second in the F1 drivers’ championship, but Michael Schumacher will not hand the Brazilian any victories.
Brawn feels the 30-year-old deserves to finish as runner-up to the five-times world champion in this year’s championship.
Ferrari’s technical director ruled out the possibility of Schumacher handing a win to the Brazilian, as Barrichello did for the German in Austria. Ferrari’s controversial team orders at the A1-Ring sparked outrage around the world, but the team was eventually fined R10 million (half of which was suspended) only because the drivers swapped places on the winners’ rostrum after the race.
While Brawn ruled out the further use of team orders to manipulate the result of a grand prix, Ferrari team boss Jean Todt said Schumacher and Barrichello would only be allowed to race each other until the second pit stop.
Barrichello outpaced Schumacher in qualifying to start on pole at the Hungarian Grand Prix and then raced to his second victory of the season and the third of his career.
“In Hungary there was no reason to restrict anyone,” Brawn was quoted as saying by . “Rubens was on pole and he made the best start, so that determined the race.
“Michael was not going to do anything that put both cars in jeopardy. I think there will be races this year where that might apply, where Michael is on pole and he’ll disappear, but we’ll let the race will develop from there.
“We’d like Rubens to finish second, but we’re not going to do anything silly to achieve that, so we’ll see what happens.”
Ferrari’s tactic from the start of the weekend was to wrap up the constructors’ championship. “That’s what we went there for, and you can’t do that with two cars in the gravel,” said Brawn.
“It would be very nice for Rubens to finish second in the driver championship. We won’t do anything silly to achieve that, but if we can achieve it, it would be a fair reward for Rubens. We’ve had a few problems with his car this year but he’s driven extremely well, and second is no less than he deserves.”
Brawn said the objective of finishing 1-2 in the drivers’ championship would take priority over all other targets, such as Schumacher’s 10th victory. “We’d like Rubens to finish second but we’d also like Michael to win 10 races if he could, because that would be a new benchmark for one driver in a season,” Brawn said.
“There are some things we still want to achieve during the rest of the season, but we all know what happened in Austria, and that’s something we don’t want to repeat, so we’ll try and do it in the nicest possible way,” he added.
