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| May 22, 2002 | Wednesday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 8,1423 |
Schumacher targets Ferrari’s 150th triumph
LONDON, May 21: World champion Michael Schumacher hopes to turn jeers into cheers with Ferrari’s 150th victory on his 100th start for the team in Sunday’s Monaco Formula One Grand Prix.
Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello, who celebrates his 30th birthday in the Mediterranean principality on Thursday, can expect to become a gift bearer once again.
The team orders, despite outrage and condemnation from aggrieved fans, are likely to remain unchanged since Barrichello did as he was told and slowed to let Schumacher win in Austria nine days ago.
Ferrari have made the position quite clear and Barrichello’s job, until the German has secured a record-equalling fifth world championship, will be to ride shotgun and help out.
If that means moving over once again, then so be it.
The Brazilian knows he cannot expect to win Sunday’s glittering highlight of the motor racing calendar unless Schumacher is out of the running.
The bookmakers are happy to take bets but the odds, Britain’s William Hill quoted 100-30 on the Brazilian winning compared to 4-9 for Schumacher, tell the story.
Ferrari are 2-9, Williams 4-1.
While anything is possible, even overtaking, around Monaco’s tight and narrow streets it will be a surprise if Schumacher does not win this one.
He leads the championship by 27 points and has won five out of six races. There can be no doubt that the German, easily the most successful Ferrari driver of all time, would be Ferrari’s ideal man to mark their historic 150.
Whereas Barrichello was the main man in Austria, Schumacher is unlikely to need much assistance from the Brazilian in the Mediterranean principality.
Even if he lives in tranquil rural Switzerland, the 33-year-old is a street fighter who has always excelled in what amounts to a local event for most of the field of millionaire tax exiles.
He secured his first ever pole position on the winding circuit in 1994 and has won five times. In the last nine years, he has started on the front row eight times.
One more win would equal the six notched up by late Brazilian great Ayrton Senna in Monaco.
Barrichello, by contrast, has never started on the front row in Monaco but has been runner-up for the last two years.
Schumacher has not said a lot since he was booed by the crowd in Austria, winning the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year award in Monaco last week but declining to give a news conference afterwards.
“I really like driving here,” he told the team’s website this week. “There are so many blind corners which make it unique and I am looking forward to racing here again.”
But Barrichello is sounding more confident than ever.
“I am going through a very good period in my life in general and I will be doing my best to win in Monaco,” he said. “I know that I am driving well enough to win races. Austria was an amazing weekend and everyone could see how well it was going for me on Friday and Saturday.
Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, the only driver other than Schumacher to score in every race this season and second overall, will be looking to master Monaco after getting too close to the unforgiving walls last year.
So too will Ralf Schumacher, his team mate, who has yet to finish in Monaco in five successive attempts.
McLaren’s David Coulthard, winner in 2000, qualified on pole last year with a sensational lap and needs to find something similar to rescue his team’s dismal season to date.
Further down the grid, British American Racing will be hoping Jacques Villeneuve or Olivier Panis, winner in 1996, can secure their first points of the season.—Reuters
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