Michael Schumacher didn't come away from yesterday's 70-lap Hungarian Grand Prix totally empty handed after all as last night the stewards' disqualified the seventh place finisher, moving the Ferrari driver up to eighth place where he claimed one world championship point, a point that could turn out to be vital come the end of the season.

Robert Kubica was disqualified after his BMW Sauber was found to be underweight following the race. Kubica, who was standing in for the Jacques Villeneuve in the Swiss team, had finished in seventh place on his Formula One debut, which was also the debut for a Polish driver in F1. Stewards praised the "assistance and cooperation" they received from the BMW Sauber team, who proved that Kubica’s car was inadvertently 2 kilograms below the minimum requirement because of "excessive and unexpected tyre wear (and therefore weight loss) through continued use of wet-weather tyres in comparison to the accustomed and anticipated rate of wear of dry tyres." The stewards nevertheless had no choice but to exclude the car as it did not comply with Article 4.1 of the Technical Regulations. BMW Sauber did not contest the decision.

This meant that Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, who had finished in eighth place, moved up to seventh, where he received two points. Michael Schumacher, who had retired three laps from the end after a tangle with Nick Heidfeld's Sauber BMW and had been classified in ninth place, moved up to eighth where he claimed a point.
 

With his title rival Fernando Alonso scoring no points for his efforts at the Hungaroring yesterday, the solitary point Schumacher earned means he has closed the gap to the Renault driver down to just ten points. With five more races remaining Alonso has 100 points, while Schumacher moves up to 90 points. Massa (52 pts) is in third place and moves three points clear of Giancarlo Fisichella (Renault) and Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren-Mercedes) who are joint fourth with 49 points, neither finished yesterday.

In the constructors' championship Scuderia Ferrari (142 pts) who scored three points yesterday are now only seven behind Renault (149 pts) who saw neither of their drivers finish the race. McLaren-Mercedes are in a very distant third with 85 pts. The next Grand Prix is in Turkey on 27th August, with the remaining four races being in Italy (10th September), China (1st October), Japan (8th October) and Brazil (22nd October).