Despondent Schuey can see no end to Ferrari woes

Ian Parkes

The reigning world champion followed his dismal qualifying performance of ninth for the British Grand Prix by finishing sixth, his lowest place since breaking a leg at the Silverstone circuit in 1999.

Schumacher found himself 75 seconds adrift of McLaren race winner Juan Pablo Montoya, and is now 34 points behind championship leader Fernando Alonso, who claimed second in his Renault.

The German’s hopes of an eighth world title are fading, and he concedes there is little chance of an improvement for his home race in Hockenheim.

“I’m not happy to have finished sixth, especially looking at my lap times,” reflected a disappointed Schumacher, continuing to struggle to come to terms with an uncompetitive car after so many years of success.

“Clearly, we are simply not fast enough at the moment. If I had not been delayed by Jarno Trulli at the start, I might have been able to fight with Jenson Button, but I am not keen on using the word ‘if’ as an excuse.

“If you compare our performance from the two north American races to these last two, we appear to be going backwards instead of forwards.

“We are not up to the level of our competitors and, although I am still looking forward to my home race in Hockenheim, I wish I could promise the fans there a bit more than what they saw here.”

With team-mate Rubens Barrichello in seventh, technical director Ross Brawn knows the team are not delivering like they used to when they won the last six consecutive constructors’ titles.

“This was obviously a disappointing race,” said a beleaguered Brawn. “We went through practice and qualifying hoping it would all come together in the race, but again, it was difficult.

“There were no particular problems, and our drivers were reasonably happy with their cars other than they just lacked pace. I am not sure, though, that we could have done better.”

Managing director Jean Todt knows the cars are simply not quick enough as he said: “On Saturday I said we could expect a difficult race and that getting both our cars in the points was our only realistic target.

“Unfortunately, that is how things turned out because we are not capable of matching the pace of the leaders and the final result is a reasonably accurate reflection of the pecking order at Silverstone.”