Ferrari and its drivers, Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello, were jointly fined $1 million by the FIA in Paris today for their antics on the victory podium after the Austrian Grand Prix. They must pay half of the money immediately but the other half has been suspended and they will only have to pay it if they are judged to have committed a similar offence in the following year.
As team orders are allowed under FIA rules if they are in pursuit of the championship the FIA could not penalize Ferrari for their on-track manipulation of the race result but FIA president Max Mosley said that what they did was bad for the sport and that they would have liked to have been able to do something about it.
Mosley criticized the Ferrari team more than the drivers who, he said, were simply doing as they were told.
In something of a cop-out the FIA said that it couldn’t figure out how to change the rules to prevent a similar occurrence in the future without also interfering with the teams’ best chances of winning the championship. Their solution is to set up a working group which will take public comments and suggestions.