Schumacher Confident ahead of Qualifying

The Ferrari team enjoyed a trouble-free practice for the European Grand Prix and World Champion Michael Schumacher claimed he was confident of another strong weekend.

"It was the usual Friday, spent preparing for Sunday's race," said Schumacher. "We tried a few changes to the set-up on the car and worked on a comparison programme between the two types of tyre. There is still some work to do in terms of finding the right set-up."

Schumacher, leader of the Championship after having scored six victories in eight races, was outpaced by McLaren rival David Coulthard in today's session, but remained confident of being able to extend his massive 43-point lead with another win.

"I am pretty optimistic for the rest of the weekend, as we seem to be very competitive on all types of track and there is no reason why that should not be the case here," he added.

Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello is aiming for a place in the top four in Saturday's qualifying after posting the fourth fastest time today with the second Ferrari, although a whole second behind Coulthard.

"This morning the car felt very good," Barrichello said. "We were learning about the changes to the track layout. We made a change to the car, but this afternoon it did not seem to have gone the way we expected. It would have taken too much time to go back to our initial settings, so we stayed with the same settings for the rest of the session.

"However, we have learned quite a lot for the race. As for tomorrow's qualifying, I am reasonably optimistic and I think we will be fighting against our usual opponents for the top four places."