Schumacher not a cheat, says Mosley

"I wouldn't go as far as to say it was cheating," FIA president Max Mosley told Reuters. "You've got to take the thing in its context - in the heat of the moment when you are desperately trying to get on the front row of the grid, and you've got a split second to take a decision."

Race stewards ruled last night that Ferrari's seven times champion deliberately stopped at the slow penultimate corner of the track in the dying seconds of qualifying to prevent rivals from beating his time.

The decision to send Schumacher to the back of the field angered the driver and his team, but Mosley defended the FIA-appointed stewards.

"The stewards have the advantage of having every detail, every piece of information, and being able to know on previous laps where he braked, where he steered, accelerated, how quick he was going and so on," he said.

"Armed with all that information, they come to a conclusion. It took them several hours, they went into great detail, it's how it should be done. That's sport.

"If you reach the conclusion that someone has done something that they shouldn't do, you've got to react. We've got to try and keep the playing field level. But these situations are always difficult."

The Briton defined what had happened as "a fairly small blip in the championship," a big drama at present but not in the overall scheme of things.

He recognised, however, that it had taken the edge off the showcase race of the season, depriving fans of a clash of champions between Renault's Fernando Alonso and Schumacher.

Alonso, the world champion who leads Schumacher by 15 points after six races, took over pole position in a race where overtaking is almost impossible.

Mosley rejected suggestions from Ferrari boss Jean Todt that the stewards had "no real evidence."

"It doesn't really stand up when they had all the telemetry, all the television images, listened to Michael and whatever he wanted to say... I don't think you could say they had no evidence," he said.

"I'm sure they did their utmost to be fair and they are fair-minded people."