Ferrari struggles in Montreal

Neither Ferrari man could make good use of their Bridgestone tyres in qualifying, while Barrichello was further hampered by being forced to use the spare car after damaging his racecar in practice this morning.

"I would say this was a difficult qualifying session," said Schumacher. "I had not expected it to be easy, but now it will be interesting to see how well our tyres will perform in the race and how much ground we make up compared to what we have lost in qualifying. I have won races from lower positions on the grid and so I am still confident for tomorrow."

Barrichello said: "It was a bit of a complicated day. This morning I took a kerb differently to usual and the car bottomed out hard enough to damage the chassis. The mechanics then did a fantastic job to refit my engine into the spare car, which meant I was able to get out on track again for the second part of the fourth session.

"The new car is handling pretty well, but my lap was not perfect. I actually made a mistake at Turn 6 which probably cost me at least half a second. But I remain confident for tomorrow because the car is very competitive in race trim."

Technical director Ross Brawn added: "All weekend we have had a tyre from Bridgestone that has been very good from the point of view of consistency, but it was a bit of a struggle to get the most out of it on the first lap. That hurt us a bit this afternoon, added to which neither of our drivers did a clean lap."