Ferrari Hope to Gain from Intensive Testing

Ferrari expect to be more competitive in Sunday's British Grand Prix after running an intensive testing programme last week that involved all four Ferrari drivers and an unprecedented amount of kilometres.

"We have made progress," technical director Ross Brawn said today, after the team tested a new aerodynamic package last week that they said produced an improvement in performance. Brawn said tyre supplier Bridgestone had also come up with some new ideas. "Bridgestone brought some interesting solutions for the coming races; nothing revolutionary but definitely a significant improvement," he said.

"We tried out a few new things to improve not only performance, through various engineering changes, but also driveability, using different mappings, which we will use in the course of the next few races," head of the engine department, Paolo Martinelli, added. "As usual, our suppliers played an important role: with Shell we tried a new fuel, while along with Magneti Marelli we experimented with a few electronic solutions."

Williams have won three of the last four races and are now only three points behind Ferrari in the Constructors' Championship. But Ferrari said they had covered 4,252 km last week in the last tests before an agreed ban to the end of August.

"We worked very hard to improve the car itself and all its component parts. Our technical partners, especially Bridgestone and Shell worked flat out alongside us. We were able to see an improvement in the performance of the F2003-GA, as well as some interesting developments in terms of tyre performance," said team boss Jean Todt.

"We can therefore prepare to tackle the race at Silverstone in reasonably optimistic mood, while not forgetting that our main rivals will be very competitive."