23.04.2004 Ferrari are quietly confident about their prospects for Sunday's San Marino Grand Prix after evaluating tyre choices during the opening free practice sessions

Rubens Barrichello at San MarinoJean Todt: 'The first day of this race weekend has confirmed our car’s potential and it seems to work well on this track.

'There is still a lot of work to do to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying and the race, but we are confident and believe we will be competitive. Once again, Bridgestone has done a good job.'

Michael Schumacher: 'We had an interesting day. We were very quick in the morning and a little bit slower in the afternoon.

'We had a clear picture of what set-up we required having tested at this track in the winter, but our competitors have picked up their pace during the course of the day and I think the rest of the weekend will also be interesting. I think we can fight for the win on Sunday, but it will not be an easy task.'

Rubens Barrichello: 'We have not yet managed to find the ideal set-up for the car in these track conditions, but I believe that, along with my engineers, we will manage to find the right solutions to fine tune the F2004 for tomorrow and Sunday. On top of that, we have seen that the potential is there.'

Ross Brawn: 'One of our main tasks today was evaluating the two types of tyre available to us and we have gathered enough data to make a choice. We were able to do very long runs to simulate tyre behaviour in the race.

'We also worked on the brakes which get a hard time at this track. Michael was reasonably happy with the set-up on his car, but one could say that Rubens was less so. Now we have to work on optimising our package for qualifying and the race.'

Free practice - First session; Michael Schumacher: 1st 1.20.084 11 laps chassis 234; Rubens Barrichello: 2nd 1.21.443 12 laps chassis 236; Temperatures: air 24/25 °C, track 30/34 °C

Free practice - Second session; Michael Schumacher : 3rd 1.21.164 23 laps chassis 234; Rubens Barrichello : 11th 1.22.096 20 laps chassis 236; Temperatures: air 26 °C, track 38/39 °C