Schumacher positive ahead of British GP

Over the past week the German has tried to move on from the controversy caused by his qualifying incident in Monte Carlo when talking to the press, and his stance showed no sign of wavering on Tuesday as he chose to focus solely on his excitement about the track and British fans.

"Silverstone is one of the circuits with the longest tradition for our sport," he said. "I've always enjoyed driving there, and I'm looking forward to the circuit this time as well.

"It's a great track that requires lots of fine-tuning for the set-up because you need a really well balanced car. I like tasks like this, and I'm sure that we'll be able to put together something good for our car.

"And what I also like about Silverstone is that the fans there are very competent. They are people who enjoy motor-sports very much and know a lot about it. So that automatically makes you want to show a good performance."

Schumacher is bullish about his prospects for the weekend, but well aware that he cannot afford to lose any more ground to Fernando Alonso in the title chase.

"We've got a lot to achieve, especially because of the current World Championship situation," he explained. "There's no doubt about it: we need to close the gap and we're determined to start doing that at Silverstone.

"The tests last week went off well for us so we have every reason to be optimistic for the weekend. There's no question about what our goal is: we're going to Silverstone to win."