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A strange day
weather-wise at the Shanghai International Circuit, with fog
and mist hanging over the impressive modern facility all day
long. It was also an encouraging day for Scuderia Ferrari
Marlboro.
On the first day
of track action for the final grand prix of the season,
Rubens Barrichello, winner of last year’s inaugural Chinese
event was sixth quickest at the end of the day with
team-mate Michael Schumacher in fourteenth spot. In the
morning the pair had been second and fifth. “There’s no real
reason for our performance to have improved, but I would say
we are looking quite competitive here, maybe like Brazil
rather than Japan,” said Michael.
McLaren-Mercedes
third driver, Pedro de la Rosa was quickest in both
sessions, followed at the end of the day by Toyota’s Ricardo
Zonta. The first “real” racer was Kimi Raikkonen, the
McLaren man ahead of new world champion, Fernando Alonso in
the Renault. Next came the final McLaren of Juan Pablo
Montoya ahead of Barrichello.
Both Ferrari men
did far more laps than usual for a Friday. The simple reason
for this is that this is the first race for a new engine for
both F2005 cars and of course, there is no second race as
the season ends here. In fact, it ends here for the engines
in more ways than one, as next year’s championship sees the
start of a new era with engine capacity reduced from 3 to
2.4 litres and the number of cylinders dropping from ten to
eight.
A whole series
of farewells gets underway in the paddock this evening, as
Peter Sauber says goodbye before his team gets taken over by
BMW for next season. Tomorrow, the Jordan team officially
marks the changing of its name to Midland for the 2006
season and Pierre Dupasquier, legendary head of Michelin
competition department hangs up his pressure gauge and heads
off for retirement. Saturday also sees the entire paddock
invited to a Minardi barbecue as the third oldest team in
the pit lane moves into the hands of Red Bull next year.
Jean Todt: “Here we
are at the second running of this Grand Prix in China, a
country that is growing up very fast. The resourcefulness of
its people is there for all to see and it is impressive.
Ferrari has a major development plan here which will see
this country becoming one of our top five markets. As for
the track, today we have gone through our usual Friday
programme, trying to find the best set-up and comparing the
two types of tyre available to us. We were able to do a
greater number of laps than usual, because the engines
fitted to both our cars only have to last for this event.
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