Another Mid Pack Friday For Ferrari

By Dale Calkins
July 9 2005

Ferrari had a rather lackluster Friday, during Free Practice 1 and 2 for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Both Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello where consistent, albeit consistently slow.

Badoer Prepares Ferrari

Another Mid Pack Friday For Ferrari	Dale Calkins
Michael Schumacher FP 1: 7th - 1'21.453 FP 2: 10th - 1'21.044 After not being able to live up to expectations in France last weekend, Michael Schumacher is making no predictions about how well he will do in the race. Michael certainly should not either after setting the 7th and 10th fastest times in Free Practice 1 and 2 respectively. While this may be a typical result from Ferrari on Friday, it is not a good indication of what will transpire this weekend. Here is what the 7-Time World Champion had to say about his sessions: “Today, we did a lot of laps and pretty much finished our planned programme and now we have to study all the data to make our tyre choice. I have to say the long runs we did were not too bad, although that was also the case on Friday in Magny-Cours. We will have to wait and see how things develop and so I don’t want to make any predictions for the rest of the weekend.” Rubens Barrichello FP 1: 9th - 1'22.216 FP 2: 15th - 1'21.519 Like Schumacher, Rubens was also took mid field times today. Unsurprisingly, Rubens was further back from his team mate, in the 9th and 15th positions. Rubens was not exactly pleased with his results, but he remains confident that Ferrari will do better come race day. Here is what the Brazilian had to say after his first day: “We decided to use the new tyres only in the morning, which explains why our lap times did not look so good this afternoon. But I am quite happy with the balance of the car, although there is room for improvement, as I have some understeer. Apart from that I think we should be a little bit more competitive than we were last weekend in Magny-Cours.” Ross Brawn Technical Director Ferrari's Technical Director Ross Brawn was dissapointed that Ferrari is not extremely conpetitive yet, but he remains confident that tyre improvements will yield some very good results. Here is what Ross had to say: “We improved the balance of the car this afternoon, as it had not been too good this morning. Because we do not have much experience of the Bridgestone tyres we have here, we altered the way we carried out our tyre evaluation. This meant we tried the two types of tyre in parallel, and therefore we did not use any new tyres this afternoon. We can be happy with the times on the long runs, during which the tyre performance was consistent. We had a bit of graining initially, but that will not be the case on Sunday. Now we just have to decide which type of tyre to use for qualifying and the race.”
July 8, 2005
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