Post by pasha on Jun 9, 2006 16:20:11 GMT -5
Michael Schumacher will continue in his role as president of the Grand Prix Drivers Association after escaping censure when the organisation met at Silverstone on Friday to discuss his Monaco ‘parking’ offence.
Schumacher came in for a wave of criticism from fellow drivers in the wake of the controversial incident, with some calling on him to resign his GPDA position on the grounds that he was unfit to represent them on safety issues.
However, following a half-hour meeting on Friday afternoon the members of the GPDA closed ranks and said the matter had now been laid to rest.
Schumacher’s fellow GPDA director David Coulthard told autosport.com: “As I have said before, it was on the end of our agenda that we had to go through, and it has all been cleared up.
“I don’t want to say too much about what the discussion was, but we are still represented by the three main directors [Schumacher, Coulthard and Jarno Trulli].
“I think it was a good meeting. It was good to clear the air over the ‘he said, she said’ of the last two weeks.
“Everyone is unanimous in that we are together and that we want to move forward and Michael is a major player in that.
“Everyone has their individual opinion of what happened in Monaco and is comfortable with what the stewards did.”
No details of the meeting were revealed, but it is understood that Schumacher did not resile from his public position that he did not deliberately stage an incident at Monte Carlo’s Rascasse corner.
However, Coulthard said the opportunity for the drivers to vent their feelings in private had been important, because it drew a line under the issue and enabled the GPDA to refocus on its core safety campaign.
“Of course there was a bit of tension to start with,” said the Scot.
“People just needed to sit down with each other and in the end it was a very productive meeting.”
There were some notable absentees from the meeting, however, including Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Juan Pablo Montoya and Mark Webber – although the Australian had earlier had a ‘man-to-man’ chat with Schumacher in the Ferrari motorhome on Thursday night.
Schumacher came in for a wave of criticism from fellow drivers in the wake of the controversial incident, with some calling on him to resign his GPDA position on the grounds that he was unfit to represent them on safety issues.
However, following a half-hour meeting on Friday afternoon the members of the GPDA closed ranks and said the matter had now been laid to rest.
Schumacher’s fellow GPDA director David Coulthard told autosport.com: “As I have said before, it was on the end of our agenda that we had to go through, and it has all been cleared up.
“I don’t want to say too much about what the discussion was, but we are still represented by the three main directors [Schumacher, Coulthard and Jarno Trulli].
“I think it was a good meeting. It was good to clear the air over the ‘he said, she said’ of the last two weeks.
“Everyone is unanimous in that we are together and that we want to move forward and Michael is a major player in that.
“Everyone has their individual opinion of what happened in Monaco and is comfortable with what the stewards did.”
No details of the meeting were revealed, but it is understood that Schumacher did not resile from his public position that he did not deliberately stage an incident at Monte Carlo’s Rascasse corner.
However, Coulthard said the opportunity for the drivers to vent their feelings in private had been important, because it drew a line under the issue and enabled the GPDA to refocus on its core safety campaign.
“Of course there was a bit of tension to start with,” said the Scot.
“People just needed to sit down with each other and in the end it was a very productive meeting.”
There were some notable absentees from the meeting, however, including Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Juan Pablo Montoya and Mark Webber – although the Australian had earlier had a ‘man-to-man’ chat with Schumacher in the Ferrari motorhome on Thursday night.