Ross Brawn

It had to happen eventually, and in Monaco Michael Schumacher and Ferrari finally saw their impressive run of success come to an end. It happened not as a result of a mechanical failure, but a bizarre crash, one which like so many in the German's career divided the paddock as to who was to blame.

Was Michael being recklessly inconsiderate when he slowed where he did, or was his nemesis Juan Pablo Montoya failing to pay attention and not giving the guy ahead space?

To a neutral it might seem a little odd that Michael chose to do his brake warming on a bend in the tunnel where there is clearly limited room for manoeuvre. He had a series of big stops coming up where standing on the brakes might have been a little less of a surprise to those behind.

Potentially the straight down to Tabac was a lot less risky if he wanted to check up from high speed, or at least the speed that the safety car would allow him. You might recall a similar incident at Monza in 2000 which saw Jenson Button in the barrier after Michael braked in front of him, but inevitably Ross Brawn sees no wrong in what his man did.

"It's very unfortunate," said Ross. "You never want to go out of a race for that sort of reason. As soon as the notice comes that the safety car is coming in the drivers start to warm their brakes up, because these brakes are very inconsistent when they're cold. Obviously Juan Pablo didn't see him. I think once the safety car comes in there's a huge amount of brake warming activity by all the drivers. I'm sure Juan Pablo has his version and Michael has another."

The irony is that Michael didn't have to be in front of Montoya in the first place. When the safety car came out Jenson Button and then Jarno Trulli both ducked into the pits for a final service, and at the time it seemed crazy that Michael didn't take the opportunity to have his last stop 'for free'.

In fact the team had decided that when things unfolded he would still have emerged in third. However, despite staying out he still had a lot of fuel on board and the hope was that from the front he could sprint away and open enough of a gap to be able to put and still resume in front of Jarno and Jenson. Brawn says the gamble was worth taking.

"I think we had a chance - not a strong chance - but we had a chance of winning the race again. It started to come together for us. We had a lot of fuel in the car. Michael would have been in a strong position to put in a series of very fast laps and try and build a sufficient lead. So it was possible.

"I don't think we would have been any worse off than we would have ended up, because we weren't making any progress on Jarno. I think we could have had a shot at it. The guys that came in were very heavy, and whilst we had fuel on board, we would have been a lot lighter. We were looking at the times we were able to do at the end of the first stint, and if we were able to repeat those, we would have been in with a shout. Michael had a completely clear track because of the safety car, so there was no one in front of him. It would have been very close..."

In reality, the chances of the plan succeeding were slim. Trulli and Button were heavy, but they too had a clear track, and would surely have kept Michael in their sights. Of course there was chance that one of the other would have crashed trying to keep up, there was an equally big chance that Michael - forced in effect to drive consecutive, all or nothing qualifying laps - would have made a mistake.

It might have been a bad day for the World Champion, but his team mate salvaged third after a difficult afternoon, giving himself and the team valuable points.

"He did very well, but was unhappy with the car from the very beginning. I think there was a bit of banging on the first lap. Certainly Michael said his car felt strange. It was a little bit of a robust first lap, and both of them were reporting that the cars were not normal. So he was struggling a little bit, but third place is some small consolation. Rubens wasn't happy with the balance of his car, and Michael was making good progress, but not as strong as we'd hoped. So it wasn't a great day."

The retirement ended any chance Michael had of extending the record of wins at the start of the season that he now shares with Nigel Mansell. If nothing else, that might take a little pressure off the whole camp, because recently the focus of F1 has been on will Ferrari slip up?

"Maybe!" Ross smiled. "But we wouldn't have been complaining if it had been the other way round. I think you get on with it anyway, I don't think it bothers Michael too much. I think it's more of an interesting point for the media than the team. We'll make sure that we bounce back at the next race."

That next race is at the Nurburgring, where Michael has enjoyed some great days in the past but overall ha scored surprisingly few wins. He sat dutifully behind Rubens two years ago, and was lucky to salvage points after being outfoxed by Montoya last year. Does Brawn expect to be back on top at a traditional circuit?

"You never assume anything. We're facing strong competition on occasions, and you saw in Monaco that things can just swing the other way quite easily. So who knows. But we've got some good tyres there, and we had a good test last week in preparation for Nurburgring. So I think we'll be competitive. I'm looking forward to getting back to a more normal track."