What you see here is someone's hard work going to waste, frustration, the inability to overcome the defined hierarchy.
The day was May 12, 2002, coincidentally my birthday. The track was the A-1 Ring in Austria. The person driving the car in the distant right is Rubens Barrichello. In the center of the picture, within the light of the film deformity is Michael Schumacher. This is the end of the race, Barrichello was just passed by Schumacher. Up until that point Barrichello was running flawlessly. He qualified first, and lead through much of the race. Without question, he was going to win, but under the circumstances, this was never going to happen.
You see, Barrichello was the number two driver of Team Ferrari and Schumacher was the number one. Coming into the race Schumacher was the series leader with a 21 point lead over the holder of the second place standings, Juan Pablo Montoya. The A-1 Ring was only the sixth round of the 17 race season. Team Ferrari, was scared of Montoya. They wanted to do everything they could to increase Schumacher's points lead and improve his chances of a championship win. Barrichello was not in such a position. Running into a string of bad luck, coming into the race in Austria, he had only two points.
With the race in the closing laps and with his teammate Schumacher in a distant second, Barrichello was given the orders by his team to slow down and let Schumacher pass.
He knew his place on the team. He was the number two. No amount of skill, or hard work was going to remove that label. At the final turn, before the finish line, Barrichello slowed. It was obvious, he never got on the gas pedal coming out of the turn. Schumacher passed him with just a few hundred feet left. Barrichello crawled to the finish line, never giving the effort to accelerate.
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