Schumacher brushes off criticism

The German had endured a tough start to the season, finishing fourth in Australia and sixth in Malaysia, after punting Jarno Trulli off at the first corner. Schumacher said that he expected criticism following these performances.

"When you make mistakes, you cannot expect to be praised," he said. "The criticism is not hard to hope with, especially as I think there will be races on tracks which will suit us better and where we will have the upper hand."

McLaren won each of the opening two races of the season, but the team's strong performance came as no surprise to Schumacher. "We had predicted they would do well over the winter and that is pretty much how things turned out," he said.

Schumacher also gave his opinion on the respective performances of Renault and Williams. The French manufacturer surprised by annexing the front row of the grid in Malaysia, whilst the British manufacturer struggled. But the German isn't convinced that this will remain the case. He said: "It is hard to assess the Renault performance: they were undoubtedly competitive in Malaysia, but how much of that was down to the characteristics of the track and the conditions there, I cannot say.

"Williams, the losers in this early part of the season? At the moment, one can say they are not the winners, but they could have been in Australia. I am sure they know what they had to do and the lap times over the last few days in Barcelona have proved it."