Brawn cautious about Ferrari form

With Renault heading into the Magny-Cours weekend as favourite for victory, Brawn is pleased with how Ferrari and Bridgestone looked in Friday practice over long runs - but is still unsure about how they will fare in terms of single lap performance.

The characteristics of Magny-Cours produce one of the biggest differences of the season between how a tyre performs over a single qualifying lap and what its race pace is after that.

It means teams will have spent Friday night evaluating whether they should gamble on their softer tyres to boost their qualifying pace, even though that tyre may not be perfect for the race.

"I think we are okay," said Brawn about Ferrari's overall chances. "The tyre we used on Friday, which is the aggressive choice, seems to be holding up quite well and I cannot imagine it is going to get much hotter than this on Sunday. Obviously the track should improve by then, so I think we will be okay.

"What is not clear yet is what the first lap performances are going to be like, because this is a track, because of tyre use and the profile of the track, that provides quite a big differential between qualifying lap and race lap.

"I can see in race performance that we look okay, but I cannot see yet on the first lap how competitive that is going to be."