Ferrari look rattled as Schuey crashes and Rubens struggles
The German seven-times champion appeared to hit a bump at the high-speed final Parabolica corner half an hour into yesterday’s session in front of his team’s passionate Tifosi fans.
His car slewed backwards across the circuit, bounced across a gravel trap and collided heavily with a tyre wall, leaving him unhurt but embarrassed.
He climbed from the cockpit of his damaged car and chose to watch the remainder of the session from behind the safety barriers rather than rush back to the pits to discuss the incident.
His accident confirmed the problems Ferrari face as they battle to avoid embarrassment in front of their fans this weekend after a year of struggles and insiders at the team were still unable to explain the incident later in the day.
Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn said: “Losing Michael’s car in the middle of the second session was not an ideal start to our weekend. We had wanted to check a couple of new things on the car.”
Schumacher’s team-mate Rubens Barrichello also suffered, finishing down in 16th place, and Brawn added: “Rubens’s car seemed to be less balanced today than in the test last week so we need to understand why.
“He only did one day of the test last week so we shall go through everything carefully this evening to see if we can give him a better set up. We still have improvements to make in car set up.”
But McLaren’s impressive form pointed towards the British team being the ones to watch this weekend as Kimi Raikkonen aims to close down Fernando Alonso’s championship lead.
Brazilian Ricardo Zonta, of Toyota, was quickest in the afternoon with a time of 1:21.203 but McLaren test driver, Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa was 0.3 seconds faster in the morning to claim the day’s top time.
Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya was the fastest of the recognised ‘race’ drivers in the second session but he was a second behind Zonta and ahead of his championship challenging team-mate Raikkonen.
The Finn, encouraged by the team’s pace, said: “It’s hard to say after the first day how we will go, but the (pre-event) tests showed that we have good speed so it looks okay. Hopefully we can have a strong race for the team.”
Raikkonen admitted failing to get the best out of his car and said he expects his strongest opponent to be Montoya.
“He has the same car as me,” he said. “I expect to do my own race and he will do his.”
Behind them were de la Rosa, Mark Webber of Australia and German Nick Heidfeld in their Williams cars, Red Bull test driver Vitantonio Liuzzi of Italy and Ralf Schumacher, of Germany, in a Toyota.
The fastest of the two Renaults was Italian Giancarlo Fisichella in ninth and his championship-leading team-mate Alonso of Spain could do no better than tenth.
For his part, Fisichella reckons McLaren will be hard to beat following their display in practice.
“There was much less grip out there today than we had at the test, which can be seen from the laptimes - we are more than a second slower than last week,” said Fisichella. “That meant the car was a bit tricky to drive, but we can fix that tomorrow morning.
“Overall, I think McLaren probably have the advantage over us - but we are where we expected to be.”
Alonso, leading the Championship by 24 points over Raikkonen, remained calm and was hopeful of a strong weekend.
“It was not too bad a day for me,” said Alonso. “The track conditions were not as good as last week in the test, because it was much hotter and that made the car harder to drive.
“We did a lot of running on the tyres last week, so today’s runs were just to confirm what we found in the test, and Michelin have brought two very good tyres.
“It looked like everybody was struggling a little bit for grip, because we saw a lot of spins, but we can adjust the car overnight to compensate.
“Overall, I think we are in quite a strong position.”
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