In Ferrari's post-race press release, Ross Brawn expressed the feeling of the Italian team: "It was a day when some opportunities presented themselves," said the Englishman, "but we did not take all of those that came our way."

With Michael Schumacher crashing out after 13 laps, and Rubens Barrichello picking up four, albeit very welcome, points, on a day when it was thought the red cars might catch their opponents on the hop, it was obvious that Jean Todt would be far from happy with the end result.

"Even if I don't like to make these kind of assessments, it is definitely not our year," he admitted. "Today we had a better package than you saw. If you see where Michael was when he had his problem, how competitive he was in the first part of the race behind Alonso. Unfortunately, and we were not the only ones, we put dry tyres on his car when the safety car came onto the track, and he realised that it was not going to work, so we put him back on intermediate tyres. Button, who finished third, was behind him. Unfortunately Sato was behind him as well, so Button didn't affect him, but Sato did, and unfortunately the race was over.

"Michael is normally quite cool, but the way he reacted is quite significant," admitted the Frenchman, "because he missed an opportunity, and we know that we haven't had so many opportunities this year, so that was one.

"But again, today, we saw how important the tyres are, but you know, clearly, our ambition is just as great as it was a few races ago. Our ambition is to finish third in the Manufacturers' championship and in this respect we took two points more than Toyota and we definitely hope we can improve the situation by the end of the season. The last three last Grands Prix will depend on the work we do with Bridgestone, but saying that, we are working hard on the car and for the future: on the V8 and the normal programme, in order that we try to leave '05 as a bad year among the whole period and to start with a good year again in 06."

Asked if he was encouraged by the performance in qualifying, he is quick to respond: "No, no good," he says. "The performance in qualifying was no good. But again, it's clear, you saw today, it's quit easy to analyse, when Webber or Klien were on on dry tyres, it was immediate lap times. It took Rubens two laps… so we know that with those specific tyres, it takes time before they get up to temperature.

"We did not see that, but I think the competitors had much more graining after the first lap, but we did not see that because we did very few laps. In a way I was quite positively surprised to see Michael only one second behind the pole because taking into account how difficult it is to be on the right temperature for the first lap, it was not bad, but it was definitely not what we want."

It was clear that Michael was very angry following the clash with Sato, for which the Japanese driver was subsequently punished. What did he say to Todt on his return to the Ferrari garage?

"He asked if I could bring forward the meeting with the stewards, so that he could leave earlier," admits the Frenchman. "He called me. Normally I don't answer the phone on the pit wall but it was vibrating in my pocket so after a while I said OK, let's try to see who it is, maybe it's good advice to win the race. But it was just that he was trying to escape from the circuit earlier.

"They listened to him, they listened to Sato and from what I heard, but I didn't see any official documents, Sato will lose ten positions (on the grid) in his next race. But Michael is going to start (qualifying) third, which is no good, in Brazil."