Ferrari Promise to Help Barrichello

Ferrari will do what they can to ensure Rubens Barrichello finishes the Formula One season as runner-up to five-times champion Michael Schumacher, team principal Jean Todt said on Tuesday.

"We will do everything possible to help Barrichello finish the Championship in second place," he told the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.

Asked whether that meant the use of 'team orders' in the final five races, the Frenchman added: "My reply is very clear: You only have to think about what I have just said."

Barrichello was on the wrong end of such orders at the Austrian Grand Prix in May when Ferrari ordered the Brazilian to give up a certain victory to enable Schumacher to win at Spielberg for the first time in his career.

The blatant way in which the race was manipulated, with Barrichello moving aside in the final few metres, drew worldwide condemnation of the team.

The drivers and Ferrari were fined $1 million, with half suspended, afterwards for procedural misdemeanours on the podium but the principle of team orders was upheld as a part of the sport.

Schumacher has now won nine of the season's 12 races and needs only one more victory to set a record for a single Championship. He equalled the late Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio's record of five titles when he won in France on July 21.

Barrichello won the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring but is currently fourth in the Championship, five points adrift of Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, after finishing fourth at Hockenheim on Sunday.

Todt said Ferrari, having equalled the team's best ever showing of 10 wins in a single season, could still match the all-time record of 15 wins racked up by Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at McLaren in 1988.

"It could be," he said. "We will try to win every race, placing our drivers first and second."

Ferrari, with a 65 point lead over Williams, can clinch the constructors' title at the next race in Hungary on August 18.