Italian GP - Ferrari - Practice
For the thousands that gather every year at Monza to cheer on Ferrari, there was little to smile about following the first day of practice today at Monza.
Michael Schumacher was an encouraging eighth best in the first practice session of the day, but in the second session he lost control of his F2005 at Parabolica, ending his session 30 minutes prematurely and as a result was unable to complete the Bridgestone tyre evaluations as planned.
The German seven-time champion appeared to hit a bump at the high- speed final Parabolica corner and 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.
Schumacher would end the session 12th best overall despite losing so much track time while Rubens Barrichello was off the pace at the circuit he won at last year and was just 16th fastest.
Michael Schumacher
“When you are not as competitive as you want to be, you try everything you can to improve and my spin was partly the result of that. I made some changes to the set-up but it made the car a bit unstable which made me slide off the track. It was not a heavy impact, as I was already at the corner exit. We have lost some track time, but it is not too important as we have tested enough here. The important thing is that the tyres are not damaged so I can use them again. A thank you to the marshals at the corner as they were all very nice, asking me if I was thirsty and wanted a drink.”
Rubens Barrichello
“We have a lot of work to do. The balance of the car was not good and we will have to find out why by analysing the data acquired over the two hours of free practice. At last week’s test, the situation seemed much better than it has done today. We knew it would be a difficult weekend, but we will give it our all to try and please our fans.”
Ross Brawn
“It was not an ideal start to the Monza race weekend, as we lost Michael’s car out on track in the middle of the second session. There were still a couple of things we wanted to check out after last week’s test at this circuit. We have some more improvements to make to the set-up, but generally we are not looking too bad. With Rubens, we have no balance on the car and we must now try and understand why that is. He only drove on the first day of the test, when the balance of the car was much better so we will have to look at every detail to understand why we have lost that balance.”
Jean Todt
“Today’s programme was slightly different to usual, in that we had already tested at this track last week. As usual, the priority was to compare the two types of tyre provided by Bridgestone. Times from free practice are not an accurate reflection of the relative strengths of the teams, as we do not know what fuel loads the others were running, so studying the data will give us the more worthwhile information. Having said that, we know that our package will have difficulty in fighting for victory in this Italian Grand Prix, which we have won for the last three years. We have to work along with Bridgestone to get out of this situation. I hope we will see some improvement in the final three races of the season.”


Tags: italy, monza, ferrari, schumacher, parabolica, practice,