After yet another difficult race weekend, it was a clearly weary Jean Todt who sat down to answer a few questions before heading off to begin his team's preparations for round seven of the 2005 Formula One World Championship, and the revival that tifosi the world over are waiting for.

Asked for his initial thoughts, regarding what his team must do to improve, the Frenchman answered almost before the question had finished.

"We need to be higher up on the grid," he said. "We were quicker today by three or four seconds than those ahead of us, but it wasn't enough to overtake those ahead of us. We need to be better placed in qualifying."

The observation that the F2005 "seems a good car", is met with a straightforward response: "I wish we could confirm it in qualifying."

So would he single out the tyres, as Luca di Montezemolo appears to be doing?

"The tyres are not sufficiently competitive in qualifying," he replies. "In the race, they are giving much better performance than those of the competition. So the situation is like that, but why should I cite one thing when there is chassis, engine, tyres; they are a combination.

The $64,000 question, can Ferrari retain its titles? "Of course we have hope," he replies, "there are still 13 Grands Prix and we are working hard to get back to where we were last year, so if we manage it, we are trying.

"If it will be enough or not remains to be seen," he adds.

After some thought, he continues: "It is still possible. Difficult but still 13 races to go, so many things can happen. Let's say the others are quite well ahead, but if you take two Grands Prix back, everything was focused on one driver. Then you had Raikkonen, who has won the two last Grands Prix, and immediately things have changed, so let's hope we are the ones to win the next two Grands Prix."

With regards the tyres, is there light at the end of the tunnel? "I don't know," he admits, his shoulders sagging just a little. "We know our weak point but we are not yet in a position to say that we are going to solve it, because otherwise we would have solved it already."

The Italian team has already carried out over thirty days of testing since the season began, has it been positive? "It's very difficult," he admits. "We know the weak point. The tarmac, the asphalt is very different from one race to another. We need to have immediate performance on one lap, that's our weak point.

"We are working on it," he reveals, "we know that during the race we are very competitive. We had another demonstration of it today where, during a certain part of the race, we were over three seconds quicker than the other competitors. Michael was lapped because of the incident he had, whereby he had to refuel earlier to change the front wing and he finished just over 35s behind after being blocked for most of the last part of the race, so it's bit of what we saw in Imola."

He's asked if the new qualifying format will help.

"Something is sure," he smiles, "it will not disturb us."