Ferrari: Ferraris struggle in Spain

07 May 2005
Ferraris struggle in Spain

Michael Schumacher could manage to set only the seventh fastest time
in first qualifying today while team mate Barrichello was ninth and
will suffer a ten place grid penalty after the Ferrari team had to
change his engine.

"We expected qualifying to turn out like this, so we are not really
surprised," team chief Jean Todt said. "However, the negative surprise
was Rubens' engine failure, which meant we had to change it, thus
losing the driver ten places on the starting grid. We know what are
our strong and our weak points and it is clear that in tomorrow's
qualifying, we will not be able to do much to move up the order. But
if Michael can stay pretty much where he is at the moment, then we
have a fighting chance, given that reliability and consistency of
performance of the various car-engine-tyre packages will play a key
role. So far this season, our performance levels in the races have
come from both ends of the spectrum, so it is hard to make predictions
about what might happen in the race."

Michael Schumacher commented, "It was a reasonable performance in this
qualifying session. I was looking strong in the first sector, but then
lost about four tenths in the last two. If we look at my pace this
morning, it is obvious we have made up some ground this afternoon,
closing the gap to the others. Whatever happens in final qualifying,
this is not the ideal position on the grid. So we will have to rely on
our race performance. I am much happier with that and I think we are
much more competitive in race trim. It is fair to say, we are still
struggling with our single lap performance."

Rubens Barrichello added, "Obviously, I'm a bit disappointed that we
had to change the engine on my car before this qualifying session. The
car seemed to be difficult to drive over the one quick lap even though
the balance of the car was quite good. The situation was not helped by
the fact I made my run in the early part of the session. I think the
car is good in race trim, although of course I will be losing ten
places on the grid, which will make life difficult. It is a similar
situation to Imola in some ways, in that we seem to struggle in
qualifying, but on old tyres in the race, I am sure we will be much
stronger."

Ross Brawn concluded, "Neither of our cars seemed to be perfectly
balanced in qualifying, which I think is down to changing track
conditions since this morning. Michael was very strong on the first
half of his lap and then got too much understeer in the second half
and it was a similar situation for Rubens. So, it was rather a
disappointing session, but in terms of time we are not too far off the
front runners and I think we will have a very good race pace. As for
the problem which led us to change the engine in Rubens' car, it is
not one we have seen before, so we will be investigating further to
discover the cause."