Rubens: This is my best shot

Barrichello qualified within 0.05s of Schumacher's pole time and his fastest race lap was less than a tenth slower. The German admitted after the race that he had to push "very hard" to stay ahead of Barrichello until Rubens began to experience brake problems.

"This is definitely my best shot," said Barrichello. "Absolutely. I mean, I have been driving quite a while. I think I've improved a step every year and you have to learn from your mistakes and so on.

"I'm feeling very confident and I think it showed that Michael [Schumacher] was on the top of the whole weekend. But I didn't let it get me down because in qualifying I was up there and if it wasn't for just a little bit, I could have done pole position. So we are going to have nice fights throughout the year."

Schumacher also admitted that he perceives Barrichello to be one of the main threats to his title defence. In the past the Brazilian has been asked to yield race wins for the German, but team orders influencing the outcome of a race are now against F1's sporting regulations.

"I've said it before, if you look at previous years, how Rubens has developed, it's going to be a very tough competition," said Schumacher. "You saw in qualifying that it's by almost nothing and you saw in the race we were really together until he faced his problems, so it's whoever can make his car work a little bit better than the other, (then) he might be up front."