Barrichello: I was confused too

"I was as confused as everybody else," Barrichello said in Japan, ahead of this weekend's Formula 1 season finale at Suzuka. "There have been so many pictures with me looking at Michael's sign and, as you can see, I didn't know what was going on.

"Nothing was said beforehand, so when I saw Michael going up [higher on the banking out of the final turn], the first thing that came into my mind was: OK, he's going to try to give me back Austria.

"So, I went in there but I didn't go up alongside him saying to myself, yes, this is it! I still backed off because maybe it wasn't the idea and I wasn't going to think: OK, just give me this win and I'll take it. But then he backed off beside me and I just finished in front. I didn't know where the line was, I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know if I'd won the race or not, so it was just a big confusion."

It seems that publicly Ferrari is still peddling the tale that it was intentional rather than the mistake 99 percent of the paddock thought it to have been, as Barrichello added: "At the end, what I understand was that Michael wanted to give it back from Austria."