It is fair to say that race day at the Circuit de Catalunya will test the resilience, determination and strategic skills of every member of Scuderia Ferrari.

Although the F2005 has definitely moved forward on all fronts in development terms, the car-tyre package, as in Imola a fortnight ago, still seems to struggle when faced with the need to produce a single quick qualifying lap. Thus we have Michael Schumacher provisionally seventh on the grid and Rubens Barrichello, who faced the additional handicap of making his run early in the session, down in ninth spot. It is unlikely that tomorrow morning’s final qualifying session will lead to a significant change in position for Michael, while Rubens will be moved ten places further back down the grid, as the team had no option but to change the engine in his F2005, when it developed a fault in this morning’s free practice.

Again as in Imola, both drivers are confident they will have a much stronger race pace, but the difficulty of overtaking at this circuit means that both drivers will have to show grit and determination to exploit any performance edge they might have tomorrow afternoon. Today’s session was run in a mood of tense expectation for the majority of the crowd, who are decked out in Renault blue to cheer on national hero Fernando Alonso. The man from Oviedo was last out on track, by virtue of having won the last race. His target was the 1:14.795 set by the Toyota of Jarno Trulli, but he just failed to beat it, by 16 hundredths of a second.

Kimi Raikkonen looked like being quickest, but the Finnish McLaren-Mercedes driver made a slight mistake and had to settle for third, just ahead of the second Toyota of Ralf Schumacher. The provisional third row is an all-Williams-BMW affair, with Nick Heidfeld quicker than Mark Webber. But like Barrichello, Heidfeld has also had an engine change and so will drop down the grid tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow’s grid will only have nine rows instead of the usual ten, because the BAR-Honda team is suspended from this race and the next one in Monaco.

Jean Todt: “We expected qualifying to turn out like this, so we are not really surprised. However, the negative surprise was Rubens’ engine failure, which meant we had to change it, thus losing the driver ten places on the starting grid. We know what are our strong and our weak points and it is clear that in tomorrow’s qualifying, we will not be able to do much to move up the order. But if Michael can stay pretty much where he is at the moment, then we have a fighting chance, given that reliability and consistency of performance of the various car-engine-tyre packages will play a key role.
 

"So far this season, our performance levels in the races have come from both ends of the spectrum, so it is hard to make predictions about what might happen in the race.”

Michael Schumacher: “It was a reasonable performance in this qualifying session. I was looking strong in the first sector, but then lost about four tenths in the last two. If we look at my pace this morning, it is obvious we have made up some ground this afternoon, closing the gap to the others. Whatever happens in final qualifying, this is not the ideal position on the grid. So we will have to rely on our race performance. I am much happier with that and I think we are much more competitive in race trim. It is fair to say, we are still struggling with our single lap performance.”

Rubens Barrichello: “Obviously, I’m a bit disappointed that we had to change the engine on my car before this qualifying session. The car seemed to be difficult to drive over the one quick lap even though the balance of the car was quite good. The situation was not helped by the fact I made my run in the early part of the session. I think the car is good in race trim, although of course I will be losing ten places on the grid, which will make life difficult. It is a similar situation to Imola in some ways, in that we seem to struggle in qualifying, but on old tyres in the race, I am sure we will be much stronger.”

Ross Brawn: “Neither of our cars seemed to be perfectly balanced in qualifying, which I think is down to changing track conditions since this morning. Michael was very strong on the first half of his lap and then got too much understeer in the second half and it was a similar situation for Rubens.

"So, it was rather a disappointing session, but in terms of time we are not too far off the front runners and I think we will have a very good race pace. As for the problem which led us to change the engine in Rubens’ car, it is not one we have seen before, so we will be investigating further to discover the cause.”

Qualifying session: Michael Schumacher: 7th 1.15.398 3 laps chassis 245; Rubens Barrichello: 9th 1.15.746 3 laps chassis 246; Temperatures: air 23/24° C, track 34/36° C