Ferrari Expecting Tough Fight for Pole

Ferrari have a package to win Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, but clinching pole position tomorrow will be ver hard, according to the team's technical director.

World Champion Schumacher, chasing his fifth win in a row on Sunday to equal Nigel Mansell's 1992 record run for Williams, finished the day with the fastest time at the Circuit de Catalunya, but wound up only seventh quickest in the second.

"I think we have a quick enough package to win the race but there is a big challenge ahead of us," said technical director Ross Brawn. "I think pole will be very difficult this weekend."

Schumacher's best time of 1:15.658 seconds in the first session was more than two seconds quicker than his 2003 pole position performance at the Circuit de Catalunya.

"Today could be described as a standard Friday in Barcelona," the German said. "We worked on fine tuning the set-up with reasonable success.

"As usual, we worked on assessing the two types of Bridgestone tyre and we think they have come up with a good compound choice for us, so I am looking forward to being competitive over the rest of the weekend."

Schumacher's Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello was second quickest but only sixth in the second. Schumacher has won five times in Spain including the last three Grands Prix and is favourite to win again on Sunday. But his 200th Grand Prix is unlikely to be a cakewalk.

"Anything could happen, particularly at the start," said Brawn. "You saw what happened at the last race, Rubens got stuck and couldn't progress...if we have two cars that get stuck like Rubens did, we'll be in trouble."