After a great drive from eleventh on the grid to second on the podium in the season opener in Australia, Rubens Barrichello returned to his native Sao Paulo for a few days before preparing for the Malaysian Grand Prix which will be held at the Sepang circuit this coming Sunday.

“I enjoyed the Australian weekend immensely,” recalled the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro driver. “Before going there, we knew our old car was still competitive, but not to the level of last year, especially as Renault and McLaren had made a big improvement.

"We always go well in Australia, so I was confident, but then the rain in first qualifying put everything up in the air. Apart from the brake problems, I had a great race, pushing from start to finish with the tyres lasting very well and I managed my brake balance problem perfectly.”

With twelve full seasons of F1 under his belt, the Brazilian has seen many changes in the way the sport is run, but he admitted that some aspects of the new 2005 rules still surprised him. “I’d prepared myself for the new format of the weekend, but some things still caught me out,” he admitted. “In second qualifying for example, I was expecting to see my actual lap time, followed later by the aggregate time and the position. Starting from my Friday time, I found it unusual even though I could see the minus and plus to other people’s laps. The feeling in the race itself was much the same as before. But in my mind, I wondered how much I could push with just one set of tyres.

“I had no time to back off, as I had Alonso pushing me hard, but I think I managed the situation very well, as I knew it is not easy to overtake on the Albert Park circuit, even if he was a couple of tenths per lap quicker than me.”

In the post-race press conference, Barrichello mentioned the occasional difficulty lapping some of the “rookie” drivers in the pack, however the Brazilian does not feel it is a serious problem. “You have to consider that in the case of someone like (Jordan’s) Monteiro, coming from CART, he is used to different rules. In that type of racing you can help yourself by holding up the leaders in the event of a possible Safety Car period. But in F1 the rules are very different. Although it is not written in our rules, between the drivers we have an agreement that if the blue flags are being waved at you, you have three corners to let the faster guy through. I was not too bothered, because we need to give these guys time to learn, especially as there is a big speed differential between our cars and their and we are coming up behind them to pass very fast.”
 

With Michael Schumacher failing to finish the opening round, Barrichello has a head start over his team-mate, but it is not something Rubens considers important. “I’ve been working hard to be a title contender all the time and I don’t think in terms of just beating Michael. I have all the ingredients I need to be successful. All I take from Australia is that starting eleventh and finishing second was a great result, especially as picking up points while we are still running the old car is very important.”

After training in 36 C heat in Sao Paulo, Barrichello arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday and he is intrigued to see how the second round will pan out. “In a way, people are having to work for two races at a time, rather than working on the limit for one, so in Sepang we will see how the cars really perform. This is the real test. I have a certain mileage on my engine and I will have to look after it. It is an unknown for us. Is the car tough enough to keep on going? Will I have to pace myself? There are a lot of question marks, but I will be out to enjoy the experience: tyres, drivers and engines must all last to the very final corner. Michael has less mileage on his engine so he will probably be able to run more laps in free practice. But we operate as a team at Ferrari and so that will be good for me too. Over the course of the year, managing the situation if me and Michael end up out of synchronisation in terms of whether we are doing our first or second race with the same engine will be an interesting situation. I don’t know if that will arise with us too often, given our good reliability record. But it is a probability. At some tracks, as a driver you need more laps to get comfortable and that will certainly apply when we visit a new circuit, like in Turkey for example, where we need to learn the track.”

After the Australian race in 2004, Barrichello had to return to Europe for testing, but this year he was able to concentrate on his own training programme. “We have two very good guys, Luca Badoer and Marc Gene, testing for us and that meant Michael and I were able to have a break, which is going to be very important in such a long season,” said the Ferrari man. “But after Malaysia we will be back to the testing regime and I am looking forward to getting my hands on the new car.”