Barrichello Plays Down Slow Times

The stunning performance of the F2005 at the San Marino Grand Prix proved that Ferrari were now a major threat to Renault's current domination of the sport, but Barrichello and teammate Michael Schumacher could manage no better than 11th and 13th fastest respectively during Friday's free practice at Barcelona

Barrichello, whose first session was affected by an hydraulic problem, was bullish that Ferrari would do better than their Friday form suggested however.

"I think that overall, we are not in as bad shape as seems to be the case if you just look at the times," he said. "We know what small changes we can make to the car to be much stronger.

"As usual on a Friday, we don't really know what the opposition has done, so it is hard to get a clear picture of the situation. I am optimistic because the situation is quite similar to Imola, in that we can expect to have a very competitive car for the race."

Schumacher was less upbeat though, and believed that the team faced a lot of work on Friday night to get to the bottom of why they were not as quick as they had hoped.

"Our performance today did not look very promising," he said. "We must now analyse all the data to see in what areas we can improve the car. Tomorrow morning's work will involve the usual job of finding the right compromise between being quick over a single lap for qualifying and being able to maintain a strong race pace.

"We did plenty of laps today, so we have all the data we need to achieve that."