Relaxed Ralf is ready for the off

Schumacher's switch from Williams to Toyota last year was one of the worst kept secrets of the season. It was clear that there was little love lost between himself and his old employers, after several years where they never really reached their full potential.

The switch to Toyota was viewed by many as a simple chance for Schumacher to cash in and keep his Formula 1 career intact. The Japanese car manufacturer has yet to look like a serious consistent front-runner, and judging by the early pace of its new TF105 that is not about to change this year either.

With such a situation it would be easy to expect Ralf to let his chin drop and throw his toys out of the pram. But that is not the case at all and, as autosport.com found out at Jerez last week, Schumacher has few complaints about what he has found so far.


I think it is quite good. Maybe you can only tell after a whole year maybe, but it has been good so far. I am happy. I found myself fit in quickly and the team is far more open than the one I used to be with. That may be because this is a pretty young team. Also I think everyone here wants success as well and having two new drivers, it adds excitement.


It was pretty much in the programme that we went out there to find how it is mechanically, and we will find out aerodynamically later, which we have not found yet . We will wait for that until the last minute, and part of that will come to the Barcelona test, where will see how it is. It is a quite a big step for us. Everything is according to the plan and it depends on the expectations. Some people may misunderstand now, that with Jarno and myself here, they think we will go to Melbourne thinking we will blow Ferrari away. That would be brilliant, but we are realistic enough to understand that is not the case. It will take a while to do that.

We have still work to do, and in Barcelona we will try different things on that side. It is the same old story that with a new car you try things which you had tried before but did not work, but sometimes it works. In Valencia last week I struggled a bit, but the balance here looks a lot better. It is clear on a low grip circuit we have to work a bit more.

There was some problem with the TF104 but I must say with that with the TF105 it is a better car, so there is no issue on that side. But there is always a room for improvement.

I am still struggling with understeer on my side. It is a general problem with this car, but I kind of expected it because the aero package we are running is not designed to take the aero balance I was running.

In Valencia we had some difficulties, which we did not understand because it was the first time we faced them. And here this week it is reasonable again, and I don't know what it was. It could have been the temperature or that we ran a bit too stiff. I really don't know. In general we are happy. Again, for the tyres, I think the consistency will come with more downforce. It is clear that when you have more downforce it is easier on the tyres.

It was never a bad car to start with, no doubt. In Valencia we had very difficult conditions as it was very cold, so I don't really worry about it.

Not from a driver's point of view. The only difference is we do lots of long runs, more than what we used to. That is the situation we face at the moment. It may be a question of turning testing around a bit because a four-day test, with the load we do, is a bit too long for one driver. We do 100 or more laps per day. I did 88 laps before lunch today and this is more than a race distance, so it is tiring. It would be good to get a contract per laps...or maybe not, if the reliability is not good!

The problem is that we have not been in hot conditions yet because usually, and especially with Michelin, once you overheat the rear tyres it is difficult to get them back again. I think we will only find out how it is, maybe in Malaysia. The tyres are stable, although we had performance drop in the long run but it came back up again. It looks okay, but it may change. We may see something unexpected when we go to overseas circuits. They are pretty good tyres actually. So far, so good in this kind of ambient temperature.

I don't think it will change honestly. I think that is the way Formula 1 is. People will always push from the beginning, because you don't want to follow other people. It is no good if you lose 15-20 seconds in the first half of the race because you will not be able to catch them up. From our point of view, and from Michelin's point of view, I don't think it is necessary to think about it. They have designed pretty good tyres.

That is going to be more and more difficult. Straight away, if you follow another car, you lose downforce even more.

It is pretty clear the strongest at the moment is Renault, and Mclaren. Renault is slightly ahead of McLaren , but we will see how it develops. Then comes Ferrari, although they do look strong in the long run. Then it is Williams, BAR and ourselves. We should not be far away from them and I expect us to be relatively close to BAR.

Yes, it looks good. We had minor issues in the previous test (in the first test Toyota had pneumatic valve failure but it was a batch problem), but that has been sorted. That is a good sign. However, at the beginning of the season teams are very conservative on the mileage in free practice and even during the race. I would not be surprised if we do not see many engine problems at the beginning. Probably towards the middle of the season when people started to risk a bit, it may happen....

I don't know.. am I good at looking after the car? Not more than anyone else ...not that I am aware of, at least. I like racing the way we had done. I do support Formula 1 to be slower for the safety reasons, but on the other side, I am not sure what kind of racing F1 should have for everyone, I mean for everyone involved in the sport and all those who watch. We will see.

By mid season it should take us to be amongst top .....five, meaning that we beat BAR and Williams. I see Red Bull Racing are not doing a bad job. I hope to see a day where our pace of development will pay off. I hope to be amongst somewhere between BAR and Williams, and if we are lucky one or two podium finishes will be great.