Barrichello: McLaren right to sign Sam Michael

Michael attends his final race for Williams in Singapore this weekend and Barrichello, who has been a close ally of the Australian over the past 18 months, believes that McLaren will benefit hugely from the decision to bring him into the team.

"McLaren has a lot to gain," said Barrichello. "I'm very happy for him.

"He is a very competitive guy and I think that his role at Williams was overcharged. It was hard for him to smile because he was doing too many things.

"He is very competent at anything that he turns his hand to and it will to be McLaren's benefit to make his job easier. He will have some time to rest and to cool down [before he joins McLaren] and I'm sure that he will do very well there."

Mark Gillan, who has joined Williams as chief operations engineer, is attending the Singapore Grand Prix to shadow Michael.

Along with Mike Coughlan, who joined the team as chief engineer and is Michael's de facto successor as technical director, Barrichello is confident that the workload at Williams will be better shared in the future.

"No," he said when asked by AUTOSPORT whether this problem would be repeated with the team's new technical line-up. "They have divided it better."