Villeneuve blasts old rival Schumacher

The 1997 world champion, who survived an assault from Schumacher's Ferrari to win his title, says that if the incident that caused the session to finish under yellow flags was deliberate, the FIA should throw the book at the German.

"I hope it was deliberate, because if that was a mistake he should not even have a F1 superlicence," the Canadian said. "If you can make a mistake like that, you shouldn't drive a race car. There's no way you could make a mistake like that.

"It's the kind of thing I couldn't dream of doing myself. I don't know what goes through your mind when you decide to do that, when you know that the rest of the world can see. I don't understand it, it's stupid.

"It shows that you can only give the benefit of the doubt to someone so many times. Sometimes it makes you realise that every time it happens there is a reason behind it.

"He didn't need to do that, he's a seven times world champion, he was on pole position. Why do that? It's only going to make him look bad."

Schumacher and Ferrari are waiting for a verdict from the stewards who are considering whether to punish the seven-time champion who has denied the incident at Rascasse was intentional.

Villeneuve believes there is nothing stopping the stewards from finding him guilty.

"They were able to prove I blocked Fisichella at the Nurburgring, and I didn't," he said. "This is so obvious. When you do something on purpose like that it is very extreme. You should not be allowed to drive a race car when you do stuff like that.

When asked whether he thought the FIA would punish Schumacher, Villeneuve said: "Well, it's Ferrari, so..."

As for Schumacher's position as president of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, Villeneuve said: "I'm sure we'll discuss it, but I don't know about that yet.

"This is embarrassing. Embarrassing for a world champion. It would even be embarrassing for [Yuji] Ide."