Schumacher positive over new qualifying

Although Schumacher and Ferrari has dominated the season so far, with the quickest race pace everywhere, there have been occasions when the first lap pace of the Michelin tyre has given his rivals an advantage in qualifying. Jenson Button, for example, beat Ferrari to the Imola pole position, four Michelin-shod cars out-qualified Schumacher in Monte Carlo and he lined up sixth in Montreal.

Thus far, the fact that cars qualify with race fuel loads has given Ferrari some leeway in which to compensate. If concerned that Michelin's single-lap advantage could mean too many cars out-qualifying them, Ferrari has had the scope to light-fuel Schumacher, as they did at Nurburgring when he took pole but was one of the first to stop, or to decide that the margin is too big to overcome and to opt for a different strategy, such as the two-stop race he ran to win in Montreal.

Under the new system, however, everyone will qualify with empty tanks and be fuelled for the race after qualifying. The same scope, therefore, will be denied Ferrari. If, at the same time, McLaren and Williams made the kind of performance step that they are hoping for in the second half of the season, Schumacher could potentially find himself qualifying behind as many as eight Michelin-shod cars.

With the Bridgestone tyre displaying different characteristics to the Michelin, it could be that the Ferrari drivers will achieve their best qualifying laps via a multi-lap run (The new system says that qualifying times will be the aggregated result from a driver's best laps in each of two 25-minute sessions in which the drivers must run six laps).

Discounting in/out laps, therefore, the Bridgestone runners could run up to four consecutive hot laps if they wished. But whether that facility allied to Ferrari's performance advantage will compensate for Michelin's first-lap performance will be interesting to see.

Schumacher told Autosport.com at Indianapolis that he was not too worried about the situation.

"If you take all the eight races we've done so far, there was maybe two grands prix where we might have had a slight disadvantage in qualifying due to the facts that you mention [the Michelin one-lap performance]. In the other races though, we were probably quite dominant. So, I don't think we need to be too concerned."

Ferrari, no doubt, will have studied any implications of the qualifying change very closely before putting its name to any unanimous agreement...