Highlights

Motor racing-Hockenheim glory far away for Barrichello

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-07-28 09:03

HOCKENHEIM, Germany, July 27 - When Brazilian Rubens Barrichello left Ferrari for Honda at the end of last year, he looked forward to winning races and fighting for the championship.

His new team, he dared to suggest, could offer him a better opportunity of achieving his dreams on the race track than Formula One's Italian glamour outfit.

"There is no limit to my imagination," the 34-year-old declared soon after his arrival. "I really believe we can win races this year."

This weekend, two thirds of the way into the 18-race championship, the picture looks very different as the good-natured Brazilian returns to Hockenheim, the German Grand Prix circuit where he won for the first time six years ago after a record 124 starts without success.

He knows how fickle Formula One can be, how quickly fortunes can change for better and worse. But his imagination would be strained beyond breaking point to invent a scenario that sees him back on top of the podium anytime soon.

Even if he no longer has to serve as loyal and long-suffering sidekick to seven times world champion Michael Schumacher, Barrichello faces another long and hot weekend playing follow the leader.

Renault and Ferrari are locked in a title battle of their own and Honda are also-rans -- 110 points off the lead and hoping not to sink below fourth place in the constructors' standings.

Barrichello has not been on the podium since the U.S. Grand Prix fiasco of June last year, when he finished second behind Schumacher in a six-car field led by the Ferraris after all Michelin-shod teams pulled out for safety reasons.

WRITE-OFF

At the French Grand Prix in Magny-Cours the weekend before last, Barrichello stopped with an engine problem after 18 laps, his second retirement in three races.

Team mate Jenson Button lasted longer but also pulled over 10 laps from the end after running 11th and behind American rookie Scott Speed's Toro Rosso. It has now been five races since the Briton scored a point.

Barrichello is making the best of the situation, after getting to grips with a very different car to the one he was used to driving, and has outqualified Button in six of the 11 races to date and is level on 16 points.

But, even if Honda deny being a 'troubled team', the gap between their pre-season billing of championship contenders and the disappointing results has piled on the pressure.