Germany’s Michael Schumacher won the Formula One Austrian Grand Prix over the weekend. Sort of. His Ferrari teammate, Brazilian Rubens Barrichello, actually had the race won but purposely slowed down to allow Schumacher to cross the finish line first.

He was acting on team orders. Barrichello wasn’t happy with it but he had just signed a two-year contract with Ferrari and did what he was told.

Schumacher is the points leader and the triumph enabled him to extend his lead to 27 points.

Schumacher defended the decision by saying the “team would look stupid” if he lost the points race by the number of points he stood to lose by finishing second.

But he also said, “It was probably the wrong decision to do it this way. I am not very happy. I take no joy from this victory.”

Ferrari team officials said they will continue this strategy until Schumacher has the points title clinched.

This is wrong. It totally defies the spirit of competition.

It is dishonest. It is not far removed from a points-shaving scandal.

Schumacher has already won four Formula One championships.

How can he look at himself in the mirror?

Everything he does from now on will be tainted.

If he was a true champion, he would want to win it on his own merits instead of through gifts supplied by his teammate.

Schumacher has pull and should use it to tell his Ferrari bosses that enough is enough.

It’s one thing if Schumacher is leading a race and Barrichello does his part for the team by blocking prospective challengers.

I don’t agree with that, either, but I can live with it.

However, to be told to deliberately slow down to allow a teammate to pass him makes a mockery of the fair play doctrine that rules sports.

To a much lesser degree, I didn’t agree with the decision made by Scarborough’s Joe Bessey and Cherryfield’s Andy Santerre that had Santerre park Bessey’s backup car after 12 laps of the Busch 200. But I totally understood the decision. It made a lot of sense.

By calling it quits after 12 laps, they saved the price of four racing tires, which works out to around $1,500, and the car was also preserved.

Busch Grand National cars cost approximately $100,000 and to wreck one would have posed a financial hardship for Bessey.

Santerre wound up finishing 38th and he earned $9,680 for it. Bessey finished 25th in the primary car and took home $10,040.

But auto racing is unpredictable. Every race is just one wreck away from an unlikely conclusion.

Santerre’s Chevy certainly wasn’t one of the fastest on the track. He qualified 28th.

It wasn’t bad, though.

And Santerre is a top-notch driver who usually gets the most out of his car. It would have been interesting to see how he would have fared if he had run the entire race.

Bessey owned a Winston Cup team a couple of years ago with Geoffrey Bodine as his driver and he had also been a regular driver on the Busch Grand National tour.

He has had to shut down both shops due to lack of sponsorship so he and Santerre have teamed up in a North Carolina shop.

Santerre, 1998 BGN Rookie of the Year, is running the entire Busch North series and is leading the points after two races.

Bessey and Santerre hope to come up with a plan for the future sometime this fall.

Sponsorship dollars are hard to come by. There are a lot of good drivers sitting at home hoping to get a phone call providing them with another opportunity to race.

A Bessey-Santerre Busch Grand National team, with a primary sponsor and the equipment and personnel they need, could be highly successful.

Larry Mahoney can be reached at 990-8231, 1-800-310-8600 or e-mail at lmahoney@bangordailynews.net.