Ferrari Is Not Fast Enough

By DCX
May 7 2005

Ferrari continued its poor showing at the Spanish Grand Prix today, with a troublesome first round of qualifying. Despite a 7th place from Michael Schumacher and a 9th place from Rubens Barrichello, the team seems to have something up its sleeve for the race.

Badoer Prepares Ferrari

Ferrari Is Not Fast Enough	DCX
Michael Schumacher Q 1: 7th - 1'15.398 Michael was surprisingly optimistic after only being able to manage the seventh fastest time in the first qualifying session. His car has improved since the free practice sessions and if Imola was any indication, the F2005 is slow in qualifying but blindingly fast in the race. Here is what Schumacher had to say: “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 Q 1: 9th - 1'15.746 Rubens Barrichello's disappointing season continued today as he was only able to manage a ninth place result in the first round of qualifying. Even worse still, Rubens was required to change his engine and will drop ten places from where he finishes in tomorrow's second round of qualifying. Here is what the Brazilian had to say: “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 Technical Director Ferrari's Technical Director Ross Brawn is quite concerned with the seemingly slow pace of his team, and is uncertain whether it will be better come race day. Here is what Ross had to say: “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 under steer 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.”
May 7, 2005
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