Four laps later, Button was slowed by a split exhaust system that burned through the wiring loom. He retired because it overheated his car's electronics. Michael Schumacher finished first after 58 laps to achieve his fifth consecutive victory and the 45th of his career. Coulthard was 1.717 seconds behind in second with Barrichello a further 31 seconds adrift in third. Panis was fourth on the road, Heidfeld finished fifth and he held off Frentzen in sixth over the last nine laps. Räikkönen, Burti, Verstappen, Alesi, Irvine, Alonso and Fisichella were the final finishers. Post-race Out of respect for Beveridge's death, the top three drivers on the podium refrained from spraying champagne. Michael Schumacher expressed the importance of ensuring he did not push too hard, "Any time I needed to be fast, I was able to go fast, and what is good is that finally we seem to be able to do good starts as well. So all in all, it's the way we wanted to be and for that reason we can obviously be confident for the rest of the season, but obviously we know there is no reason to be overconfident." Coulthard said he felt fortunate to finish second after starting from sixth, "I would imagine the team are disappointed, obviously, for whatever the particular problem was with Mika's car, but you've always got to expect some reliability issues in the first race. You hope you can get two cars to the finish, but I don't believe any team would put a lot of money on both their cars making it so far." Barrichello explained he did not battle Coulthard because of an understeer and was told by Ferrari's technical director, Ross Brawn, to slow towards the race's end because of fluctuating oil pressure, "It was a difficult race since the beginning, because I had all sorts of troubles." Sauber team owner Peter Sauber filed an official appeal with race officials against the BAR and Arrows teams because he believed Panis and Verstappen illegally overtook Heidfeld under yellow flag conditions for Bernoldi's lap two crash. The stewards interviewed the three drivers and reviewed video footage of the incident before upholding Sauber's protest. Panis and Verstappen incurred a 25-second time penalty and dropped from fourth to seventh and ninth to tenth, respectively. This promoted Heidfeld to fourth, Frentzen to fifth and Räikkönen into sixth. Panis argued the stewards made an