Michael Schumacher finishes fifth after being forced to give up his pole position and start last at the Monaco F1 Grand Prix.
MONACO: Michael Schumacher apologised on Sunday, while still protesting his innocence, to anyone who suspected he had tried to manipulate Monaco Grand Prix qualifying in his favour.
Speaking after Renault’s world champion Fernando Alonso had won the race, and having salvaged something by finishing fifth after starting last, the Ferrari driver said he had a clear conscience. “Anyone who thinks I deliberately wanted to wreck Alonso’s lap is wrong,” he said. “And to those who think that, I can only say ‘I’m sorry that it happened’. But that was certainly not the intention because I was not even aware of where Alonso was. We didn’t have radio contact and I did not have any knowledge of who was driving out.”
On Saturday, FIA, motor racing’s governing body, came down hard on the seven-time champion after finding him guilty of “deliberately stopping his car in the middle of the track”. In a statement, after an exhaustive eight-hour inquiry, officials said they had no doubt Schumacher had stopped on purpose.
“Having compared all relevant data the race stewards can find no justifiable reason for the driver to have braked with such undue, excessive and unusual pressure at this part of the circuit, and are therefore left with no alternative but to conclude that the driver deliberately stopped his car on the circuit in the last few minutes of qualifying,” a FIA statement said.
“I’m used to living with criticism and in certain situations you just have to live with it,” said Schumacher, who remains second in the championship — albeit 21 points behind Alonso — and set the fastest lap of the race.
“I think there is a lot of prejudice involved, because no one was really sitting in that car and knew how and why everything happened as it did. Without knowing the situation we had and what I felt, no one else is really in a position to accurately judge what happened from the outside,” added the 37-year-old. “I have to admit that certain things must have looked a bit curious from the outside but there were reasons for that and I don’t really want to elaborate on it. It’s not really anyone else’s business either.”
Schumacher, recognised that his career was a chequered one with lows to match the highs. “Everyone’s got some spots on their clean vests,” he declared. “I believe I’ve had for the most part a clean vest in the 15 or 16 years that I’ve been in Formula One and there are perhaps a few darker points in there where some may dispute or criticise things. But I can live quite well with that.”
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