Q: How difficult was it to tell Rubens that he would have to let Michael through?
Ross Brawn: That decision was as tough as they get. Rubens has not had the best of luck this year - circumstances where because of problems with the car, he has not been there at the end. When you are in that sort of position it does make it doubly difficult because you are mindful of the difficult season he has had.

Q: Surely, it's difficult to explain to everyone, though?
RB: We tried to explain there were three years, '97, '98, '99 when we lost the championship at the last race and we can't take that chance. Until, and if, we are ever in situation where it doesn't matter we have to put maximum effort behind the person who has the best prospects of winning the world championship - that really could be Rubens or Michael. It doesn't make any difference to me. But today day Michael had 44 pts and Rubens had six; it was not a difficult decision in that respect.

Q: Given the reaction, do you now regret that decision, because there will be a lot of flag thrown at Ferrari over the next few weeks?
RB: I am sure there could be. It would have been very easy for us to orchestrate a deceptive approach to the decision we made. It was would have been easy to change the pit stops around, easy to do other things to make it less obvious. That would have taken the credit away from Rubens because Rubens has drove very well this whole weekend. To have done it in a clandestine way would have taken credit away from Rubens but it was something we could have done and tried to hide behind the way we approached it but we didn't. It was the decision we wanted to make. Some people will understand it, some won't. As I say, when we you've been at that last race of season and losing the championship at the last race there's a lot of tifosi unhappy then. Hopefully they will understand and respect our decisions.

Q: You said at the Maranello launch this would never happen again. What changed your mind?
RB: The situation today is that Michael has 44pts, Rubens Barrichello has 6 pts, such is the situation. If both were fighting for World Championship from an equal points basis we would not have made the decision we would have made today. Rubens understands that so I have no problem with the decision we made today and nothing has changed really.

Q: One of your fellow team technical directors has described it as cynical, possibly bordering on fraudulent? Say some people put lot of money on Rubens Barrichello to win today and Michael has taken that win?
RB: I don't really don't want to comment on other people's opinions. We controlled the race today. We told the drivers we didn't want them racing. We told the drivers they had to cut the engine revs because they had to look after the brakes, we told them not to take any risks with back-markers. That's the nature of Formula One, that is the nature of the business we are in. When you make that decision then you make the decision to control the race thereafter.

You can't tell your drivers not to race and then not be prepared to make the decisions that comes after that because Michael might come back and say 'well, why wasn't I allowed to race' We didn't want to damage the equipment, we wanted to give ourselves the best chance of winning the Driver's championship. I can quite understand it is something that is going to raise a lot of opinion but we have to do what we feel is right.

Q: Do you feel the sport has been damaged today?
RB: Obviously there has been a lot of reaction. We all have to make decisions. We have to make decisions about what is best for Ferrari. I can't really answer that question for you. If we are able to reach a situation where mathematically we have won the championship it will be interesting to see. But we had that for five races last year and I don't think it made any difference: five races where Rubens and Michael wouldn't have had any decisions made for them, it didn't make any difference. It just happens once or twice and we had to make the decision we made.