Ralf downplays Thursday performance

The Toyota driver's day ended early after he crashed near the end of the second practice session.

Schumacher finished down in 20th position, but the German reckons Toyota have the potential to do much better this weekend.

"It was not the happiest day for me," admitted the German. "There was not as much grip as I would have liked and the car was sliding a bit. But we will work on our set-up before qualifying and I am optimistic we can find an improvement. Unfortunately I did not quite get to the end of the second practice.

"I caught the kerb quite hard and that put me into the tyre barrier and damaged the car a bit. I was on a strong lap so my final position does not really show what we were capable of today.

"I am fine after the crash and the team will be able to repair the damage in time for tomorrow's sessions."

Teammate Jarno Trulli fared better despite losing some valuable time in the morning as a consequence of a major water leak in the garage which disabled the telemetry screens.

Trulli finished the session as fourth quickest.

"Today was a bit difficult in general because we had the odd problem and also some bad luck this morning in the first session," he said. "The burst pipe this morning cost us a bit of time and also affected our data as well. But the guys did well to fix everything and we went through our programme quite successfully in the afternoon.

"The car is still a bit difficult to drive and we still have to work a lot in order to make it better. I am missing some grip and we have some graining on the tyres but I was pleased with my lap time in the second session.

"All in all it looks quite promising and I am hopeful we can build on this. You can never know how things will go at Monaco but I am always confident and I am hopeful of a strong result."