Schumacher Not Making Predictions

The Ferrari driver wound up 10th quickest in second practice, over 2.5 seconds off the pace set by McLaren's third driver Pedro de la Rosa.

But after a strong qualifying performance didn't mean a competitive race in France last Sunday, Schumacher is cautious about making predictions for this weekend.

"In Magny-Cours I was quite optimistic the whole weekend because we had a good test coming to France and I really had the feeling to say we could realistically fight for the victory," said Schumacher. "And everybody knows how the race went in the end.

"For the moment I don't dare to predict what will happen except that we really worked well today, the outcome we will only know later. If you look at the times for today carefully you can see that over one lap it looks as though we are again a bit weaker but on the long runs I look a bit better.

"Again, what will it mean for Sunday's race? I don't know."

Schumacher, however, is confident his team will be strong over long runs and so in the race.

"Not surprisingly McLaren seemed very strong," he added. "But if you look at the long runs they didn't look too bad for us at first but then they didn't look too bad at Magny-Cours either and in the race it was different so let's just wait and see.

"I don't want to put out predictions but maybe I can give out some hope."

Schumacher's teammate Rubens Barrichello was 15th quickest.