Ferrari not confident of a win in Turkey

Michael Schumacher said he was encouraged about the long-run form of his Bridgestone tyres in Friday practice - in contrast to the bad graining that Alonso suffered.

When asked just how strong he felt Ferrari were looking so far, Brawn was not openly confident.

"It is too early to judge," he said. "We were a bit anxious coming into this race because we were so bad last year.

"We know we have got a much better car, we know the tyres have progressed, and we know how poor we were last year and I think everyone was a bit nervous.

"It's a very unique surface here, it's very smooth. The make-up of the surface is the smoothest we race on.

"Last year, we couldn't get the tyres to work and the car wasn't great, it was weak. We were anxious about how we would perform this year but are encouraged at the performance we've got. But it is too early to judge where we are going to be on Sunday."

Brawn said that the option of using the soft tyre, which was evaluated by Felipe Massa on Friday, was marginal "but not out of the question," while the harder version that Schumacher stuck to looked encouraging.

"Yes, it didn't take a genius to work out he (Schumacher) was on the hard tyre," Brawn said. "It looked very consistent, but the great thing is that it has the grip.

"There are lots of hard tyres around that don't have the grip, but Michael was pleased with the consistency and the grip."