Schumacher Warns He'll be Back

World Champion Michael Schumacher has told his rivals not to draw the wrong conclusions from the first two Grands Prix of the season and denied Ferrari were facing a crisis.

Schumacher, who collided with Italian Jarno Trulli in Sunday's Malaysian race, had never before failed to finish on the podium in one of the year's first two Grands Prix.

"One shouldn't draw the wrong conclusions from races that don't go perfectly," the German said on his website. "We are not already facing a crisis, absolutely not. There were special circumstances in these races and my mistakes did not exactly help.

"There will be races when other teams have advantages and there will be races in which we have advantages. It would be presumptuous to believe that there could be a repeat of the 2002 season - we never believed that."

Schumacher won 11 out of the 17 races last season and finished each one on the podium. Ferrari have no plans to rush their new car into action before the San Marino Grand Prix on April 20 at Imola and Schumacher said he still had faith in the old model.

"Our old car is still fast enough even if it didn't show that clearly in Australia and Malaysia because of the conditions and mistakes. The two crashes didn't exactly help our programme, that's clear. But I don't think it has really put us back."

Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello finished second in Malaysia behind McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, after crashing in Melbourne.