We Could Have Won Anyway, Claims Brawn

Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn believes that eventual victor Michael Schumacher could have won the Spanish Grand Prix fair and square if he had not suffered the vibration problems which dramatically slowed him.

McLaren's Mika Hakkinen looked set for victory before going out with mechanical problems on the very last lap to gift Schumacher the win, but Brawn believes a problem-free Schumacher could have caught the Finn.

"It would have been very close," said Brawn. "With the strategy and my calculations we should have just done it anyway -- but that was assuming we had a good set of tyres in the last stint.

"He (Schumacher) radioed in straight away to see if we knew what was wrong," continued Brawn. "The car felt strange from the very beginning.

"We knew from Hakkinen's refuelling time he would stop on lap 50 and we knew what time we needed and we thought we had enough. But we couldn't repeat the performance we had (earlier) on the tyres."