Schumacher has always been good at Imola

Manama (Bahrain): Formula One champions Ferrari were fined $ 10,000 after romping to a one-two win in the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday for a pit lane incident involving Rubens Barrichello’s car.

Race stewards ruled that Barrichello, who finished second behind six-time world champion Michael Schumacher, had been released from his pit stop by the Italian team when it was not safe to do so.

Italian Jarno Trulli’s Renault pitted at the same time as Barrichello.

Germany’s Ralf Schumacher, Michael’s younger brother, was also officially reprimanded by stewards for forcing BAR’s Japanese Takuma Sato off the track in an incident that also carried the Williams driver out.

A great start

Michael Schumacher, meanwhile, after a great start could well see his team Ferrari repeat the feat on April 25 when Imola, the champions’ home circuit named after team founder Enzo and his son Dino, hosts the first race of the year in Europe.

Schumacher has won the San Marino Grand Prix for the past two seasons and four times in the past five years. After Imola comes the Spanish Grand Prix, a race that the German has won for the last three years.

By the time he gets to Monaco in May, a race where qualifying is crucial, he could easily have stretched his record tally of career wins to 75.

If he triumphs in Imola, Schumacher will have equalled his best ever start of four wins in-a-row at the beginning of the 1994 season. Ferrari’s rivals are either in disarray or still putting together the building blocks for a genuine challenge.

McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, Schumacher’s closest rival last year, blew up for the third race in a row and has yet to score a point in 2004. The former champions are now a mind-blowing 47 points adrift of Ferrari.

Williams’ Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, third overall last year, limped home 13th after losing most his gears. His team need to mirror their performance of last year, improving rapidly once the first three long-haul races were out of the way after starting with a car that needed significant development.

By August they looked like title favourites after being written off in the early races.

“We are working very hard and I hope we can repeat what we did last year,” said Theissen. “We just have to move on, to push for development... currently I think it is more about how the tyres suit the weather conditions than how the car suits the track.

“Looking forward to Imola, the main issue is temperature in my view. We have had some strong races in Imola as well so generally the track should suit us.”

The first three races have been unusually cool, with brief showers and overcast skies in Bahrain, favouring Ferrari’s Bridgestone tyres over rivals’ Michelins. While Williams and McLaren search for solutions, BAR and Renault are providing the main race day resistance.

Renault’s Fernando Alonso was third in Australia, and has scored points in every race from the most unpromising of positions, while Briton Jenson Button has been on the podium for BAR in the last two races.

(Reuters)