Monaco: Ferrari's Michael Schumacher was banished to the back of the Monaco Grand Prix starting grid on Saturday after stewards found him guilty of a driving infringement and stripped him of pole position.
The stewards said in a statement that the seven times Formula One champion had deliberately stopped his car on the track at the penultimate Rascasse corner in the closing seconds of qualifying, preventing rivals from setting a faster time.
Renault's Spanish world champion Fernando Alonso will now start on pole with Australian Mark Webber alongside in a Williams.
Schumacher's pole had triggered an immediate cheating controversy in the grand prix paddock, with rivals slamming the behaviour of the most successful Formula One driver the sport has ever seen in the season's glamour race.
Schumacher protested his innocence, claiming he had made a simple mistake, while stewards spent nearly eight hours reviewing the evidence before reaching a decision.
They said they found "no justifiable reason for the driver to have braked with such undue, excessive and unusual pressure at this part of the circuit and (we) are therefore left with no alternative but to conclude that the driver deliberately stopped his car on the circuit".
"The driver will start the race from the back of the grid," they added.
The German's excuses cut no ice with angry rivals. "I hope it was deliberate, because if that was a mistake he should not even have an F1 superlicence," 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve said.
"If you can make a mistake like that, you shouldn't drive a race car. There's no way you could make a mistake like that," added the Canadian, who won his title after a notorious clash with Schumacher.
Webber said: "I just feel you don't have to do this stuff. Why does it always have to happen? It's like Mike Tyson biting someone's ear off, isn't it?"
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