World champion Michael Schumacher says he never wants to race in the same team as his brother Ralf.

Schumacher's current team mate Rubens Barrichello has signed a new deal with Ferrari that will keep him alongside the German until 2006 and Schumacher said he was glad that the chance of teaming up with his brother, who drives for Williams, had not arisen.

"No that wouldn't have been nice at all for one main reason; if both Ralf and myself were in one team we would race and one would be the winner and one the loser. That is something that Ralf doesn't want to do to me and I don't want to do to Ralf," Schumacher told a news conference on Thursday at Ferrari's winter retreat in the Dolomites.

The record six-times world champion said winning and losing in rival teams was an entirely different matter than competing in identical cars for the same team.

"If you are fighting in two different teams you may call it winning and losing but then you call it under different circumstances and other things will be responsible for that," he said.

Schumacher compared his and Ralf's situation to that of German-based Ukrainian boxing brothers Vitali and Vladimir Klitschko.

"The Klitschko brothers will never box against each other and we won't do the same in FI. We don't want to fight (against) each other in the same car," he said.