Ferrari not concerned with Montoya's pace

Schumacher led Barrichello in a 1-2 during the morning's free practice session and the team's senior personnel chose instead to concentrate on the F2003-GA's overall competitiveness than concern itself with not setting pole, which it missed out on by just over a tenth of a second.

"We know we still have work to do to optimise all aspects of our package," said the team's sporting director Jean Todt, "but we believe that we have the potential to run successfully for the rest of the grand prix weekend."

Schumacher, who was first out on track in the one-hour session, encountered a great of autumnal debris on his lap and was once again out-paced by his team-mate. "The fact that, once again, I was first out on track was certainly not an advantage," he said. "I am happy with the time I set and the position from which I will tackle tomorrow's qualifying session.

"I think we have a good base on which to work for the next couple of days. Now we have to see how competitive we are up against our rivals."

Ferrari's technical director Ross Brawn is also convinced the team will get stronger as the weekend progresses: "Track conditions were quite difficult this morning with the wind blowing in a completely different direction to last week. Running low downforce makes it difficult to find the right balance, but by the time we tackled qualifying it was looking reasonably good.

"Michael suffered a bit because there was some rubbish and leaves on the track when he went out. We had a pretty good idea about which tyre we wanted to race from the results of the test [last week]. We will now concentrate on that tyre to be in good shape for Sunday's race."