A Difficult Day For Ferrari In Brazil


By Dale Calkins
September 25 2005

The Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro team struggled in today's qualifying session for the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. Michael Schumacher put in a decent lap and starts 7th but Rubens Barrichello was slower, starting 9th.

A Difficult Day For Ferrari In Brazil

A Difficult Day For Ferrari In Brazil

Dale Calkins
Michael Schumacher
Q: 7th - 1'12.976

Michael Schumacher knew that the Brazilian Grand Prix would be a struggle for Bridgestone and Ferrari, and is seems that he was correct. Ferrari has been in the top ten for most of the weekend, which is a good sign but they clearly lack the performance needed to combat the McLaren, Renault and BAR cars in front of them. Michael had to go out closer to the start of the session because of Takuma Sato's bonehead move on the German driver, but he managed to set a decent 7th quickest time. Not as good as he had hoped, but the tyres simply didn't have the grip for anymore. Here is what the 7-Time World Champion had to say about his qualifying run in Brazil:

"I am not happy with my lap this afternoon. It started well, but towards the middle section I began to lose grip and I think this was because the tyre pressures went up higher than we wanted, causing me to slide around. But, looking at the data, it seems it was not just down to the pressures, so the track must have been more slippery than in the morning, which can be seen from looking at the other drivers’ times. When I saw my lap time, I expected to be much further back on the grid, so this is not such a bad result at the end of the day."

Rubens Barrichello
Q: 10th - 1.13.183

Rubens Barrichello was trying his best to impress his home crowd but a major lock-up meant he would set the 10th fastest time. Rubens does believe that had he not had a problem with bottoming out, that he could have been on the front row. This is wishfull thinking at best. Hopefully Barrichello can do something and put on a good show for the Brazilian Tifosi. Here is what the Brazilian had to say after his session:

"I am very disappointed because this morning the car was set up very well. But this afternoon, the car was bottoming pretty much all the time and because of this I lost about 5 km/h going down the straight and it was even difficult to steer. Now, the engineers are checking what was the problem. I am really disappointed, because I think I could have done around a 1’12.1 which would have put me on the first or second row."

Ross Brawn
Technical Director

Ferrari's Technical Director Ross Brawn, was upset about Rubens' problems but believes that Michael can score some much needed points. Here is what Ross had to say about the qualifying session:

"Michael’s performance was pretty good given his position early in the running order. We are therefore reasonably happy with his performance. Unfortunately, we had some problems with Rubens’ car, which was not as good in the afternoon as it had been in the morning. Now we will have to investigate to see why that happened and hope we can have a good race. It’s a shame, as Rubens could have been in a much stronger qualifying position."

September 25, 2005

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