Last Friday, following the free practice sessions, F1™ team bosses held a meeting with Bernie Ecclestone. The point of the meeting was to discuss some of the bad press that F1™ has been getting recently - claims that the sport has become boring, rumours that teams were in serious financial difficulty.

At the conclusion of this high-powered, high-octane brain-storming session, very little was being given away. The quotes were few and far between: "All we really talked about for a good two and a half hours was the positive side of Formula One™," said Paul Stoddart. "What we could do to make it better and stop whinging about the problems."

"We're going to talk things up, it's not all doom and gloom," BAR boss Dave Richards told pitpass' Bob Constanduros. Adding that the groups had discussed how F1™ could move forward, that TV figures were reassuring and a 'negative press' had been to blame for inaccurate stories.

Well if F1™ had any intention of moving forward, that went right out of the window today.

If Richards and the rest of the team bosses, who have sat for years with their snouts buried deep in the trough, really blame the media for 'negative press' then they ought to take a long hard look at today's events.

What happened at the A1-Ring today is an insult to every Formula One™ fan, every Ferrari fan, every Michael Schumacher fan, every Rubens Barrichello fan, every fool that bothered making the trip to Austria, every person that sat down to watch the race on TV or listen to it on the radio, everyone that mistakenly believed that there was any passion remaining in the sport.

Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of passion in F1™, but it's from the other side of the paddock fence.

There is no other way I can put this, today was an insult to everyone. Today Ferrari brought the sport into disrepute and they should be punished severely.

I have no problem with team orders, and regular readers will know how I feel about Rubens re-signing with Ferrari. But today's 'result' was so cynical that even the strongest of mouthwashes won't remove the bitter taste from my mouth.

If Ferrari really had to bring in team orders, then why not do so earlier. Indeed why couldn't the team have simply reversed the order courtesy of a botched pit-stop, they've done it before.

I honestly believed, and I write as a forty-eight year old, not a teenager who's only been into F1™ for a couple of seasons, that Ferrari were slowing Rubens in order to get the cars to cross the line together. Oh no! That's not what Ferrari had planned at all.

"In the past we have lost the Drivers' Championship at the last race three times in a row and we know we are up against strong opposition," said Jean Todt.

Whilst this is what Michael had to say: "Imagine if we had lost the championship by this number of points at the end of the season," said the German. "The team would look stupid in that situation."

In case we hadn't got the message, this is what he said at the post-race press conference: "I’m sure that the way Rubens drove today he has a lot of opportunities to secure victories this year and I told him on the podium that I hope that the championship is soon finished so we can go for real racing." So in other words Ferrari has already decided that Michael will win the Championship, so screw Rubens and screw the fans.

Tell you what Bernie, rather than going through all the magazines and websites to see who's using your precious ****ing F1™ and Formula One™, why not give Michael the bloody trophy now so that we can all see some real racing!

This clearly means that no matter how many poles Rubens gets this year, no matter who he dedicates them to, at the end of the day the Brazilian will always have to capitulate to orders from 'on high'.