Under fire Ralf determined to succeed

After a promising test in Barcelona last week, Schumacher Jr said at Interlagos: "I'm pretty sure that we can fight McLaren and Ferrari for pace here. We made real progress last week and we still have some new aero parts for this race."

After bullish talk at the launch of the new FW25, Schumacher admitted that his motivation had taken a knock after a difficult couple of tests and then a tough opening race in Australia.

"When you are hopeful about something and it doesn't quite work out, you do see motivation go down a bit, but I've never seen as big a push to get the car right as at the Williams factory," he said. "In Australia it was difficult to set the car up and then in Malaysia we didn't expect oversteer because we had found understeer before, and I didn't do a very good job.

"But last week the car was much easier to drive, much more stable and I'm confident that the situation will be very different here compared to Malaysia. The championship is still the aim and the next two races will be very relevant to that."