FIA summons Schumacher

Ferrari and their drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello have been summoned to appear before motor racing’s governing body, ...

Ferrari and their drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello have been summoned to appear before motor racing’s governing body, FIA, on June 26 following the team’s controversial victory in the Austrian Grand Prix.

World champion Schumacher was let through to win the Grand Prix by Barrichello in the final meters of the race after the Brazilian was ordered to move over by the Italian team. The ‘‘team orders’’ decision was widely condemned by other drivers, spectators and the media in Italy and elsewhere. ‘‘Following an incident during the last lap of the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix and incidents during the subsequent podium procedure, the FIA has summoned the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and the drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello to appear before the World Motor Sports Council at its next meeting, which will be held in Paris on June 26,’’ the FIA said in a statement.

Media slams Prancing Horse

SPIELBERG: Austrian newspapers blasted Ferrari’s ‘‘team orders’’ win at Spielberg as a farce on Monday, pouring scorn on a decision which gave Michael Schumacher his fourth consecutive win this season. ‘‘Formula One as Formula Farce!’’ the Kleine Zeitung newspaper said of Sunday’s race at the A1-Ring. Spectators were stunned in the final seconds of the race as Brazilian Rubens Barrichello, who had led from the start, braked out of the last corner to allow four times World champion Schumacher to win his first Austrian Grand Prix. An Austrian firm said it had set up a call centre to field complaints from fans demanding their money back from organisers. The complaints would be passed on to the state prosecutor to investigate the grounds for a case.

‘‘Formula One party in Spielberg turns into a betrayal of the sport,’’ said the front page headline in the Kurier newspaper above a photograph of Schumacher bowing to Barrichello on the winner’s podium. ‘‘The A1 arena had reached boiling point,’’ the paper said. ‘‘Even die-hard Ferrari fans were seething with anger and disappointment. A troop of them was hanging from the balconies shouting ‘It’s a fix’.’’