Ferrari's Schumacher wins as Ralf falters

Ferrari's Michael Schumacher won a battle of brothers and dealt another blow to McLaren rival David Coulthard with a commanding victory in Sunday's European Grand Prix.

Coulthard finished third behind the Williams of Colombian newcomer Juan Pablo Montoya, leaving the Scot 24 points behind the triple Formula One champion in the title chase after nine of 17 races.

"I am certainly delighted," Michael Schumacher said after leading for all but one lap of a race short of real thrills but a local crowd-pleaser, nonetheless, for some 150,000 fans basking in the sunshine.

"Nothing can happen better than winning your home grand prix."

A race billed as the battle of the Schumacher brothers saw an early duel between the two local heroes evaporate as younger sibling Ralf blew his chances with a basic mistake at the end of his first pitstop on the 28th lap.

The Williams driver, who won the last race in Canada ahead of Michael and started on the front row alongside the Ferrari, had been right in his brother's slipstream. He twice tried to sneak past before both pitted at the same time.

As they left, with Michael ahead, Ralf illegally crossed the white line at the end of the pit lane, dividing it from the track, as he rushed to get out before Coulthard came by.

He duly picked up a 10-second stop-go penalty. The setback pushed him down from second to fourth, where he finished the race, and provided the major talking point of the day.

Ferrari's Brazilian driver Rubens Barrichello was fifth, ahead of McLaren's Mika Hakkinen in sixth place.

NICE RACE
"We have had a superb weekend - we got pole position, we got the win and we had a nice race again together, Ralf and myself, until the stop-and-go," Michael Schumacher said.

Nice might not have been how Ralf saw it, however, after a start that saw Michael veer across the track forcing his brother to back off or risk hitting the Ferrari or the wall as he was sandwiched between the two.

The younger German refused to comment on that incident which Michael insisted was perfectly within the rules.

"It was quite an entertaining weekend because, in the end, Juan Pablo was coming and pushing hard so, in this respect, we are very delighted to have finished where are."

Schumacher, however, felt that his brother's stop-go penalty on the 40th lap had been a harsh one.

"It was obviously a hard decision for Ralf to get this stop-and-go penalty for, as I heard, just half a car passing the white line. It's quite a strong decision which destroyed his race."

But BMW motorsport director Gerhard Berger, himself a former Ferrari driver and now Williams's engine partner, said rules were rules and Ralf had to accept he made a mistake.

Montoya, who had finished just one race before Sunday, was left to battle the Ferrari driver after himself leading for one lap while the Schumachers were in the pits.

But the Colombian, third on the grid and twice smashing the lap record in the early stages of the race, could not sustain a serious challenge to the Ferrari.

"We've been trying really hard with the team and the car is very competitive," Montoya said.

CLEAR SKIES
"Today, things started going my way. The first few laps of the race, I took it really steady.

"I knew that Michael and Ralf were going to go and I just wanted a couple of laps to get into it and just build up the pace slowly. The car was really quick today."

It was Michael's second win in a row at the Nuerburgring, the 49th of his career - just two short of Frenchman Alain Prost's all-time record of 51 - and his fifth of the season.

He also became the first driver to triumph from pole at the circuit since it was reconfigured in the 1980s and returned definitively in 1995.