FORMULA ONE/Austrian GP fallout: Following Ferrari's highly contorversial imposition of team orders at Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, the Italian team have been called to appear before Formula One's governing body, the FIA, on June 26th, where they could face sanction.

Rubens Barrichello had dominated last weekend's grand prix, claiming his fifth career pole position on Saturday and running faster throughout all the race's preliminary sessions. He led the race from the start and with a healthy four-second gap back to Michael Schumacher just four laps from home the Brazilian looked certain to score his second grand prix win.

But in the closing stages Ferrari bosses radioed through to Barrichello telling him to move over and let Schumacher through. Barrichello only moved across as the pair rounded the final corner and as Schumacher swept across the line first, the 100,000-strong erupted into a cacophony of catcalls.

The uproar carried over into the paddock where many rival team bosses branded Ferrari's move as cynical and unsporting. The uproar created by the controversy has inevitably prompted reaction from the sport's law-makers.

The summons to Ferrari is more than likely simply a PR exercise in which the body must be seen to be doing something about the controversy and it is likely that the Italian team will leave unpunished.

The FIA could, however, invoke a rule which dictates that it is illegal to interfere with the result of a race. If that is the case then the result could be reversed leaving Schumacher on 50 points. The drivers' championship's second-placed man is Juan Pablo Montoya, who has 27 points. Barrichello would then move onto 16 points, four behind third-placed Ralf Schumacher.

Another course of action open to the body is to penalise the team itself.

With Schumacher insisting that he had nothing to do with the decision and Ferrari sporting director Jean Todt claiming it was purely a team decision, the FIA could strip Ferrari of the 16 constructors' points it scored on Sunday while leaving the drivers' points intact.

However, there exists no recent precedent for taking such actions. At last year's Austrian GP no action was taken when Barrichello was forced to cede second to Schumacher just yards from home. No action was taken against McLaren or its drivers in 1998, when David Coulthard handed victory to team-mate Mika Hakkinen in a private pact at the Australian race.

Elsewhere, Jordan's Takuma Sato was released from Graz University hospital yesterday, having been kept under observation for 24 hours following his terrifying accident with Nick Heidfeld on Sunday.

A Jordan spokeswoman said that the Japanese driver, who was T-boned by Heidfeld's spinning Sauber on lap 27 of the race, had undergone a barrage of tests and was reported to be fine, having sustained only soft tissue damage to his right leg.

She added that Sato would not take part in this week's two-day test in Valencia in Spain and that a decision would be taken on his fitness to take part in the upcoming Monaco Grand Prix in the the next few days.

In the event that Sato is unfit to race, several names have been linked with the Monaco drive. Former Jordan testers Ricardo Zonta and Tomas Enge head the shortlist. Brazilian Zonta, who raced in place of Heinz-Harald Frentzen in Canada and Germany last year, is currently racing in the prestigious Telefonica World Series in Spain.

Czech Enge tested for Jordan in 1999 and raced with Prost at the end of last season and currently drives for the Arden team in the FIA International F3000 series, where he was buoyed last weekend by victory in the race at the A1-Ring.