Todt: Drivers' Championship is Main Goal

Ferrari sporting director Jean Todt has again defended their decision to impose team orders at the Austrian Grand Prix by claiming the Drivers' Championship is the Italian team's main priority this year.

The Ferrari fans were angered by the decision to force Rubens Barrichello to hand the A1-Ring win to Michael Schumacher, but Todt said that Ferrari were acting in the best possible way. He claimed that the fans overreacted after the team orders move and insisted that they had not understood the reasons behind the decision.

"Maybe we do some things which are not understood very well, which are not very popular, but at the end of the day we have to run a team, a company," Todt said.

"What is a team? A team is a group of people who work for one aim. Our aim is the Drivers' Championship and as I have said before, who seems to have the best chances to win it is Michael, so all the team has to help Michael and all the team means his teammate as well.

"And on the manufacturers', that's the second aim but as I said, I did not change anything on that. So I think very often people over react a bit."

Todt added that the tifosi is all that matters to him and he insisted that criticism from throughout the Formula One paddock meant nothing.

"They see predominance of Ferrari, they see in a way, the predominance of Michael and it's human to say that one has 57 or 58 wins, the other has hardly got one," he added. "But on the other hand, we don't belong to ourselves.

"We are all paid, I would even say well paid to do our job, the best we feel for the company, so I'm only a bit sad that it was not very well understood, accepted, because for me what really matters on top of what we want to achieve is the tifosi.

"You know they are part of it, nobody can say we don't care about them, we do care. We just want them to understand. When you are going around the world on the sea, you have a rough sea and good sea.

"That's normal, it's part of life and that's the only thing that really matters for me. The comments of some of the people involved in the business, honestly I don't think are very sincere. Tifosi are sincere. That's why I admit (accept) what they do. The others are not sincere."