23/09/2005
NEWS STORY
Jean Todt: It has been a normal Friday, with work centred on finding the best set-up on the cars and comparing the two types of tyre that Bridgestone has brought here for us. It is difficult to make predictions about the rest of the weekend. We know we can improve but we don't know how much room for improvement the other teams could have. And as usual, the other unknown factors are fuel loads and tyres.
Rubens Barrichello: To be honest, I was quite happy with the way the car went this afternoon, as we improved it quite a bit from the morning session. It behaved a little bit better than we had expected and we seem to be a bit more competitive than over the past couple of weekends, especially in race trim. Now we have to wait and see what the weather does tomorrow as that could be an important factor for the next two days.
Michael Schumacher: As usual, it is difficult to know after today's practice what the true situation is and we will find that out after studying the data in terms of qualifying and the race. On the plus side we made progress from the morning to the afternoon. As usual here, the bumpy and slippery nature of the track makes the car quite uncomfortable to drive and it can feel unbalanced and twitchy. But I get the feeling we might be in slightly better shape than we have been recently.
Ross Brawn: No major problems over the two hours of free practice. The car was a bit difficult to drive over the bumps to begin with, but the engineers came up with some good changes to deal with that. As usual, we managed to carry out a full assessment of both types of Bridgestone tyre. The softer one is faster over the first lap, but it grains a bit more. Tonight we will look at all the wear figures to decide which tyre to use. In general terms, the car is not bad.