Columnist Ron Kantowski: Ferrari: red cars, red faces

Tuesday, May 14, 2002 | 9:33 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Usually, somebody has to get killed in a race car before the mainstream media will donate valuable column inches to auto racing, especially the kind where the cars don't have doors.

That's about the only positive thing that can be said for the Ferrari Formula One team's decision to have its No. 2 driver, Rubens Barrichello, pull over to the side of the road as if he were seeking directions, allowing the great Michael Schumacher, the team's No. 1 driver who is leading the world driving championship, to win Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix.

It might have been the most bogus result since Hulk Hogan stopped The Undertaker in a Texas cage match -- although not quite as offensive as Chan Ho Park grooving a 75-mph cheeseball to Cal Ripken Jr. in last year's All-Star game, or Brett Favre allowing Michael Strahan to "sack" him and set an NFL record.

Schumacher, to his credit, was ashamed to accept the victory and insisted that Barrichello be given the trophy and take the top step on the victory podium, normally reserved for the winning driver.

Too bad Rosie Ruiz wasn't available to hand out the big bottles of champagne.

This was a perfect case of a sport screwing up its most endearing feature. Formula One, like most forms of auto racing, is a team sport, only it does a better job of hammering home that point. In F-1, each team has to build its own car from scratch -- you can't just buy a chassis off the shelf, like in NASCAR or Indy-car racing -- and the cars must be painted identically in either the team (very cool) or sponsor (not as cool) colors.

It makes the sport easy to follow, even if you don't have the money for a program -- or can read the language it's printed in.

Contrast that to NASCAR, where you almost have to be related to Benny Parsons to know who's driving for whom. Like a couple of weeks ago at Talladega, where teammates Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Michael Waltrip finished first and second -- Earnhardt in a red car and Waltrip in a blue one.

But Formula One can learn a lot from those two when it comes to manipulating a race. You've got to be subtle about it. When Earnhardt took the lead with Waltrip just behind him in second, that's just the way they stayed for lap after lap after lap. Waltrip did a nice job of shielding Earnhardt from being passed -- such a nice job, in fact, that he "couldn't get a run" on Earnhardt himself.

At least that's what the press notes said.

If the Ferrari brass would have been thinking, it could have fumbled a wrench during a pit stop, allowing Schumacher to get ahead of Barrichello. Or it could have instructed Barrichello to slow down just enough so Schumacher could make one of the daring passes he is known for.

But there's nothing subtle about pulling over a few hundred yards from the finish in full view of a packed grandstand.

Ferrari's reasoning in having its drivers follow "team orders" is that were Schumacher to lose the championship by four points or less -- the difference between first and second -- it would look "stupid."

But do you think Schumacher, who may be the best driver who ever lived, would want to win his record-equaling fifth championship in that manner?

The asterisk that would be placed next to his name would make the one that followed Roger Maris around for the rest of his life look miniscule by comparison.