Schumacher To Start 3rd For The French GP
By DCX
July 2 2005
Ferrari is set for an excelent race tomorrow in France as Michael Schumacher will start 3rd and Rubens Barrichello 5th. Schumacher set the 4th fastest time but will move up because of Raikkonen's engine penalty.
|
Schumacher To Start 3rd For The French GP |
DCX |
|
Michael
Schumacher Q:4th - 1'14.572 Michael Schumacher continued his consitancy today, as he set the fourth fastest time during qualifying for the French Grand Prix. Michael set the 4th fastest time, but will start 3rd because of Kimi Raikkonen's engine penalty ahead of him. This qualifying time will give Schumacher an excellent starting position for his assault on the 20005 French Grand Prix. That is, if Ferrari and Bridgestone can improve their starts. Here is what the 7-Time World Champion had to say about his qualifying run at Magny-Cours: “We felt we could do well here and I will now be starting from third on the grid which is a good position, even though I had hoped to be fighting for pole. Even so, this is a better position than we have found ourselves in at most of the races so far this season. The important thing is that we are looking good in race trim and so I expect we will have a strong pace tomorrow afternoon. It will be a tough race and it will be interesting to see how the various strategies work out. Let’s wait and see.” Rubens Barrichello Q:6th - 1'14.832 Rubens Barrichello will also benefit from Kimi's misfortunes as he moves up to 5th on the grid. Also like Schumacher, Barrrichello has benefited from improved performance from Ferrari and Bridgestone. Rubens' starting position, combined with Ferrari's excellent race pace should indeed yield at least a podium finish. Here is what the Brazilian had to say after his session: “I had a really nice lap during which I pushed to the limit and I am happy with my performance. The only problem I had was a bit of graining on my front tyres towards the end of the lap. We did not see this happen in the morning so it was unexpected and I had to lift off a bit in Turn 13 because I had understeer and that lost me a bit of time. I said we could have a good race if we qualified in the top three rows and here we are, so I can be optimistic for tomorrow.” Ross Brawn Technical Director Ferrari's Technical Director Ross Brawn, is quite confident that Ferrari has improved enough to fight for the win, even if they didn't get the perfect qualifying results they were looking for. Here is what Ross had to say about the qualifying session: “We looked reasonably competitive over the single lap, which is something we have been working to improve on all season. Today, we were fighting for pole, but we did not quite do it although the fact we were in a position to fight for it was encouraging. Neither driver managed to do a perfect lap, which was a shame. Nevertheless, I think we will be competitive tomorrow when our tyres should work well and deliver consistent performance. The balance of the cars was much better today, but we did not manage to capitalise on that this afternoon, although we seem to have a good race set-up.” |
|
|
July 2, 2005 |
|
|
Find out how Ferrari has improved so much on the Ferrari 1 Message Board. |
|