Schumacher: Ferrari can Win

The German, who thrust himself back into contention for the title this year after winning the controversial United States Grand Prix, ended the second session third fastest behind Pedro de la Rosa and Juan Pablo Montoya.

"This has been a productive Friday and I am quite happy with what we have achieved," said Schumacher. "The car seems to behave quite well as do the tyres, which probably explains why I have the impression the car is sliding around less than usual on this track.

"I think we can be fighting for the win this weekend. The team has worked very hard over the past weeks and even months and it seems that all this work is beginning to pay off now."

Technical director Ross Brawn was more cautious about Ferrari's form, however, and believed that the team still had work to do - especially on fine-tuning the handling of the car.

"The lap times we saw today are quite encouraging, however, we have not yet found a good balance on our cars," he said. "So we still have some work to do on the cars to improve that as we have too much understeer, which is costing us precious time in the long corners.

"Once we have fixed that, I think we will be quite competitive for the rest of this weekend."