Ferrari puts Barrichello first

The give-away came when Michael Schumacher was asked whether there was any chance of him finding a way past Barrichello towards the end of the race.

"That was not the intention, honestly," he replied.

Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn confirmed: "The most important strategy was to win the constructors' championship. That's what we were here for this weekend, and you can't do that with two cars in the gravel trap.

"And it would be nice for Rubens to finish second in the drivers' championship. We won't do anything silly to achieve that, but if we can achieve it, that would be a fair reward for Rubens. We've had a few problems with his car this year, but he's driven extremely well, and second is no more than he deserves."

As far as the drivers being free to race with both championships now safely locked away, Brawn added: "We'll have to see what develops. We'd also like Michael to win 10 races if he could, because that would be a new benchmark for one driver in a season. There are some things we still want to achieve in the rest of the season, but we all know what happened in Austria, and that's something we don't want to repeat. We'll try and do it in the nicest possible way."

Ferrari would not be drawn on precisely how and when their race strategy was decided, with some even suspecting that Schumacher deliberately conceded the pole, at a track where he took it by 0.8s last year.

Brawn said: "Obviously qualifying was very important, Michael was on the slippery side of the grid. What we were very cautious about at the beginning of the race was the Michelin as it wore down suddenly coming alive. We knew we had an advantage, but we didn't have enough data to be sure it was an advantage for the whole stint. We were very cautious about that. Our first stint was reasonably quick, but with a precautionary approach, so both drivers were under instruction not to damage the tyres."