Gene: Ferrari ready to win at Imola

The Italian squad have failed to shine in the last two races due to a variety of problems following their strong start of the season in Bahrain, where Michael Schumacher started from pole and fought for victory.

Ferrari are planning a major upgrade to their 248 F1 car for the San Marino Grand Prix, and Gene believes that will boost their chances of winning their first race since last year's United States Grand Prix.

"We go to Imola to win. The car is going really fast and everyone in the team wants to turn around a points table which penalizes us excessively," Gene told Gazzetta dello Sport.

"The engine has already successfully gone through a couple of simulations on the bench and one at Vallelunga, and here we haven't run into problems either, so the reliability factor seems definitely solved. Now we must concentrate on performance.

"If I was to say what state we're in, I'd say it's very good. The fans only need to have a little patience."

Both Gene and teammate Luca Badoer kicked off Ferrari's testing programme at Barcelona yesterday. The Italian driver is expected to test several new parts today before Schumacher joins the test tomorrow.