Ralf will race in Canada

The Williams-BMW driver has decided he will race after all, having put off the decision a couple of times over the last week.

But he is driving in pain although he has opted to strap up the leg injured in the Monaco Grand Prix rather than use a cushion beneath his heel in the cockpit as he did this morning.

"The leg is sometimes in a bit painful but its not so bad that I can't put up with it. Therefore the race shouldn't be a problem," he said.

Schumacher started off on the wrong foot - injured or not - as he was restricted to two laps in the morning session because of a software problem which was then compounded by an engine problem resulting in the replacement of the BMW V10 and wound up 21st.

"I'm not happy with the car's set-up," he said. "We don't have enough grip and we need to find it aerodynamically and mechanically. We're going to have to study the data hard and see what we can do."

Schumacher and his engineers faced a hard night of what technical director Patrick Head described as "homework". "I don't think slow corners are one of our strong points at the moment and there is room for a lot of improvement in our performance.

"But we are strongest in the medium and fast corners and we have already done a lot of homework because this place is always. hard on the brakes."

To see full results from the first practice session at the Canadian GP, click here.