Todt Justifies Schumacher's Anger

Schumacher completed a dismal hat-trick with another retirement after 14 laps when BAR's Takuma Sato crashed into the Ferrari driver at Spa.

The German, who believed he had a good chance of fighting for a strong result thanks to the mixed track conditions, was rammed in the rear by Sato after the safety car went in and was clearly furious with the erratic Japanese.

"Michael is normally quite cool, but the way he reacted is quite significant because he missed an opportunity, and we know that we haven't had so many opportunities this year, so that was one," Todt said. "But again, we saw how important the tyres are, but you know, clearly, our ambition is just as great as it was a few races ago.

"He asked if I could bring forward the meeting with the stewards, so that he could leave earlier. He called me. Normally I don't answer the phone on the pitwall but it was vibrating in my pocket so after a while I said okay, let's try to see who it is, maybe it's good advice to win the race.

"But it was just that he was trying to escape from the circuit earlier. They listened to him, they listened to Sato and from what I heard, but I didn't see any official documents, Sato will lose ten positions in his next race.

"But Michael is going to start (qualifying) third, which is no good, in Brazil."

Stewards ruled that the BAR driver was to blame and penalised him 10 places on the starting grid for his next race.