Barrichello: I'm More Motivated Now

Brazilian Rubens Barrichello has claimed his motivation is still intact despite what happened at Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, where he was ordered to let teammate Michael Schumacher overtake him in the final part of the race.

The Brazilian driver, in his second season with the Ferrari team, was clearly unhappy after finishing in third position at the A1-Ring, but two days after one of his best races in Formula One, Barrichello has admitted his team's decision has only make him more motivated for the next event.

"I am not at all demotivated by what happened," Barrichello said. "I am determined to do as well as possible in the next race. In fact, I am more motivated to do even better. It might be difficult for people to judge my performance, even if from time to time they can see how good I am. I feel I am very close to Michael's times and I am very consistent in the races.

"Being a professional in F1, I learnt from the start of my career that yesterday is the past and you just have to keep on going forward," he claimed. "Of course, I was unhappy to be asked to move over. The one thing that makes my life difficult at Ferrari is nothing to do with the team structure or team orders, it is just the simple fact that Michael is a good driver."

Despite Ferrari's decision and his evident anger once the race finished, Barrichello said he had no problems with either Ferrari's sporting director Jean Todt or technical director Ross Brawn, and the 28-year old even allowed himself to make a joke about Ferrari's radio.

"After the race we talked and we had different opinions and everyone is entitled to have their own opinion," Barrichello added. "That does not mean I do not get on well with Jean and Ross. Working with Ross is great and we even managed to have a little joke about the last race, when we had our Sunday night de-brief with Michael and all the engineers.

"Going down the check list of every aspect of the car, I was asked how the radio worked. I replied: "too good!" In the race I never considered pretending I couldn't hear the request to move over, because the Ferrari radio works too well!"