Motorsport: Schumacher finally says sorry - by text

If Michael Schumacher feels remotely repentant about the move he pulled on Rubens Barrichello in Hungary, he does a good job of hiding it.

Yesterday, a month later, he got round to apologising to his former Ferrari team-mate - by text.

Schumacher said there were two reasons for his decision to send Barrichello a message: "The main one was that the Belgian Grand Prix here on Sunday is his 300th. We have quite a history, so it was appropriate to congratulate him. He felt I wanted to push him into the pit wall, and I wanted to clarify that that was not my intention. If he felt that was the case, I'm sorry for that."

Lewis Hamilton has long got over having victory here in 2008 taken from him on specious grounds by the governing body, and is resigned to struggling on until McLaren can figure out how to unlock the potential his car has yet to yield.

"People say this race is critical for us," he said. "I'm hoping that this race and the next one, at Monza, will be the closest we get to Red Bull and Ferrari for the rest of the year unless things change in the next couple of weeks.

"We had our big package at Silverstone that was supposed to close the gap, and it didn't. We have very intelligent people at the factory, but we are not fast enough. I don't think our car will be all that different to what we had in Hungary, but this circuit should suit it better."

-THE INDEPENDENT