Champion salutes designer Byrne

Bryne seldom comes to races, preferring to concentrate on design tasks at Maranello rather than race engineering and strategy, which is Ross Brawn's forte, but always makes the short trip down the road to Imola.

The South African accompanied Schumacher and Barichello onto the podium for the presentation of the race trophies and the world champion said: "It was right that Rory should be there. I have worked with him for a long time, since Benetton days, and he is a uniquely motivated, talented and great gentleman. Of course this result is not all down to him, it's a team effort, but he is the main designer and we should give him credit."

The extent of Ferrari's superiority was something of a hammer blow to the opposition and even Schumacher admitted: "We didn't expect it all. It was close in qualifying and we expected the race to be more difficult. But Bridgestone brought a new tyre that gave us great consistency and combined with the new car, it was a package that I was very happy with."