Jackie Stewart not impressed with Schumacher stunt

“It is 16 years and four months since we lost a driver,” Stewart told the Daily Express referring to the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994.

“We are never more than a millimetre away from something awful happening and for Schumacher to do what he did with Rubens Barrichello is just inviting disaster.” Schumacher pushed Barrichello close to a concrete wall at 190mph in the Hungarian Grand Prix as the Brazilian overtook and it was only that the barrier ended which prevented an accident.

Stewart said: “For one driver to do that deliberately, knowing that the wheels could interlock and that he had nowhere to go, was shocking.

“It was one of the most blatant abuses of another driver that I have seen. It is a terrible example from a man who has seven world titles, bully-boy tactics.” Schumacher was given a 10-place grid demotion for the Belgian Grand Prix but Stewart added: “The punishment was the minimum they could do. It cannot go on.”

Ferrari have been summoned to Paris to answer charges of breaking the rules over team orders at a hearing of the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council on September 8. The team could lose the points they won for letting winner Fernando Alonso pass Felipe Massa at the German Grand Prix.