Brawn: Ferrari to Begin 2005 with Hybrid Car

Ferrari's technical director Ross Brawn revealed this weekend that the World Champions will start the 2005 season with a hybrid car, which was first tested last week at Jerez, Spain, by Michael Schumacher.

"In last week's tests in Jerez, Schumacher tried for the first time a hybrid car - that is, a car with a 2005 aerodynamics configuration," Brawn told Gazzetta dello Sport. "The first impression wasn't the best one because the hybrid has less grip and aerodynamic load than the F2004, so it turned out more difficult to drive. Schumacher was a bit perplexed but, after some work on the set-up, things got better."

The FIA are set to introduce new technical regulations for 2005, which are aimed at slowing down the cars by three seconds compared to this season. But according to Brawn, the Ferrari hybrid is already faster than the intended goal.

"According to our data the loss of aerodynamic load, forced by the regulations, should have been 25% - but we've already made some of that up and now we are at 20%," Brawn said. "We are confident that by the start of the season we'll reach 15%. We should have been three seconds slower in the lap times, but in fact we'll lose around 1.5 - 2 seconds.

"So we'll start next season with the hybrid car, and we'll introduce the new one later, because our objective is to optimize it to the new regulations."

Brawn also predicted that the new regulations will see less pitstops during the races.

"I think that [in 2005] we'll go from three pit stops to two, even though we won't be able to change tyres during the race," he told the newspaper. "To have only one pit stop would not be convenient because with so much fuel on board there is the risk of stressing the tyres too much during the race, and of being not fast enough in qualifying."