Brawn fears tough time for Schu

Schumacher's dramatic crash in morning practice forced him to make a precautionary switch to his T-car and spare engine, meaning that the German would be handed a 10-place grid penalty. He lost further ground with the team fuelling him up and, despite the pace of the F2004, Brawn is fearing a far from easy race.

"It's going to be difficult," said Brawn. "It's not an easy track to overtake on and some of the teams further back are pretty quick and difficult to overtake.

"From the qualifying performance you can see we have got different strategies for the cars, so maybe his strategy will enable him to recover a bit. But maybe he is praying for rain tomorrow."

Brawn expressed some relief at the fact that Rubens Barrichello delivered exactly what was expected of him with a brilliant pole position in front of his home crowd - and obviously believes that the Brazilian would be a more than worthy winner on Sunday.

"Rubens has been strong all weekend," added Brawn. "We've had a complete contrast and with Michael qualifying so far back we were a bit desperate for Rubens to do well and he held up the team.

"I hope he does win. He has worked very hard this year, he has worked very well this weekend and he deserves it."