Schumacher: more work needed on tyres

Schumacher won the Imola race after fending off pressure from world champion Fernando Alonso for more than half the race distance. The Renault driver was following the Ferrari car nose to tail as Schumacher appeared to struggle with graining on his Bridgestone tyres.

And, despite rivals stating that Ferrari's win at Imola did not indicate they will be fighting for the championship, Schumacher believes he will continue to battle at the front.

"There's no reason not to consider this Ferrari competitive," Schumacher told Gazzetta dello Sport. "It's always been that, with the only exception being Malaysia.

"In Australia, too, when the tyres started to work properly in the race, we were quick. That means the car is very good at its basis. Now it's a matter of working towards ensuring this performance is available at all times during the race.

"That's why we need to carry on with the tyre tests to understand a bit better what goes on at all times.

"Everyone could see how I lost competitiveness at Imola with the second set of tyres. Clearly we now want to understand exactly why.

"So, one of the reasons for our tests [at Paul Ricard this week] is to repeat the same racing conditions while finding an improvement in performance."

Schumacher joined his team at the French track yesterday, where he ran a total of 125 laps on the twisty 3E-SC layout of Paul Ricard. He added: "I don't find the layout of the track odd; certainly, it's the one we need to find the answers about the level of competitiveness of our tyres."

The Italian daily sports paper also quoted an unnamed Bridgestone engineer, who said: "We know we still have problems to solve, so we have lots of work to do.

"The chosen layout [at Paul Ricard] is perfect for the selection of tyres for the Nurburgring and to start working for the ones needed at Monaco. But this track is also ideal to select the tyres for Montreal."