Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello will start tomorrow’s Brazilian Grand Prix from the fourth and fifth rows of the grid respectively. The German set the seventh fastest time, while Ferrari’s local boy set the tenth quickest, but will in fact start from ninth place, after eighth placed Jarno Trulli takes a ten place penalty, having changed an engine in his Toyota after free practice. Building on a promising performance on Friday, both Michael and Rubens were confident they could qualify well this afternoon. However, Schumacher found his car lost grip halfway around the lap, while Barrichello’s F2005 was bottoming, causing him to lose speed and have difficulty speeding. However, the race on Sunday could be a different story on a track where overtaking is a possibility.

Fernando Alonso took a step closer to becoming the first man to relieve Michael and the Scuderia of the Drivers’ crown since 2000, by putting his Renault on pole position. Further aiding the Spaniard’s title aspirations is the fact that his one rival for the title, Kimi Raikkonen made a mistake when braking for Turn 1 on his qualifying lap and starts from row 3 in fifth spot. However, the Finn’s McLaren-Mercedes team-mate, Juan Pablo Montoya is on the front row in second spot. Sharing row 2 are the second Renault of Giancarlo Fisichella and the BAR-Honda of Jenson Button.

Jean Todt: “After this morning’s free practice we were hoping for a better result than this, but the result over one flying lap this afternoon did not come up to our expectations. In fact, both our drivers found that their cars did not perform as well as they had done in the morning. However, I believe we will see a closely contested race on a track where overtaking is possible, especially on the main straight. Of course, it’s not possible to make any more definitive predictions because of the usual unknowns surrounding the different fuel levels, consistency of tyre performance and reliability.”
 

Michael Schumacher: “I am not happy with my lap this afternoon. It started well, but towards the middle section I began to lose grip and I think this was because the tyre pressures went up higher than we wanted, causing me to slide around. But, looking at the data, it seems it was not just down to the pressures, so the track must have been more slippery than in the morning, which can be seen from looking at the other drivers’ times. When I saw my lap time, I expected to be much further back on the grid, so this is not such a bad result at the end of the day.”

Rubens Barrichello: “I am very disappointed because this morning the car was set up very well. But this afternoon, the car was bottoming pretty much all the time and because of this I lost about 5 km/h going down the straight and it was even difficult to steer. Now, the engineers are checking what was the problem. I am really disappointed, because I think I could have done around a 1’12”1 which would have put me on the first or second row.”

Ross Brawn: “Michael’s performance was pretty good given his position early in the running order. We are therefore reasonably happy with his performance. Unfortunately, we had some problems with Rubens’ car, which was not as good in the afternoon as it had been in the morning. Now we will have to investigate to see why that happened and hope we can have a good race. It’s a shame, as Rubens could have been in a much stronger qualifying position.”

Qualifying Session: Michael Schumacher: 7th 1.12.976 3 laps chassis 249; Rubens Barrichello: 10th 1.13.183 3 laps chassis 248; Temperatures: air 26/25°C, track 34/33°C