Barrichello Surprised at Schumacher's Mistake

Rubens Barrichello revealed that he remained speechless when he saw his teammate Michael Schumacher spin out in qualifying today, but the Brazilian said that he and his rivals should not discount the World Champion in Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix.

Schumacher will start from the back row of the grid or the pitlane after making a rare mistake at the tricky first corner of the new Shanghai International Circuit and failing to set a time.

But Barrichello said: "I guess the nature of the circuit will provide some overtaking and I think Michael can still be up there. If he can win the race or not, that is probably a little bit more difficult, but I wouldn't discount him.

"Obviously he is going to have a tougher race but we have seen his year, for example, (Giancarlo) Fisichella or Felipe Massa have started from the back and had really good races where they finished in the top six."

Barrichello, who won the last race in Italy, qualified his Ferrari on pole position for the second successive race and said he was surprised to see his teammate make his qualifying mistake.

"It's not often that you see Michael doing such a mistake," said Barrichello. "When I saw it I stayed 20 seconds without words because I didn't know what to say really - you always expecting something really good.

"I don't know if Michael was going to be able to beat that but it was good enough and I'm happy. The balance of the car was quite good, but I guess the competition is quite hard as well so it's going to be a close fight tomorrow.

"It's new for everyone. The amount of grip that we are going to get from the track in the race is still unknown and I think the rubber will come up definitely throughout the race and I think it could change a lot.

"We've seen different times throughout the weekend - sometimes we are faster, sometimes McLaren, BAR, even Williams were faster so it's going to be a good race and it's a track where you can overtake. It's going to be a good one."

Barrichello won the Italian Grand Prix from pole with a three-stop strategy after rain interrupted the race at the start and he chose to start on wet weather tyres before stopping for drys on the sixth lap. Schumacher still managed to finish second despite an opening-lap spin that put him down to very last place and he is almost certain to fight through the pack again in Sunday's race.