European GP Ferrari qualifying notes

Seventh pole of the season for Ferrari and for Michael Schumacher. This is the Scuderia's 144th pole position, the second at the "new" Nurburgring. For the driver, it is his 39th pole.

Jean Todt:
"This seventh pole for Ferrari and for Schumacher confirms just how competitive is our team. And having Barrichello's car on the second row is also a very positive result in terms of the race. As predicted, qualifying came down to a fight between three teams. Even though Michael was unable to run in the second half of this morning's free practice, he still managed to be quickest this afternoon. Today, Bridgestone has given us excellent support. Rubens was unable to get the most out of his second set of tyres as he had to pit with a power steering problem, which was quickly sorted out. It will be a very tough race tomorrow and the key factors will be reliability, strategy and tyre performance."

Michael Schumacher:
"After losing half the morning with a hydraulic problem, we were not sure what to expect in qualifying, as I did not have time to run new tyres in the morning. It turned out that the car was well set-up for qualifying. I do not expect to see a repeat of Canada tomorrow, as our tyres are very good and consistent here. I think we have the better tyre for the weekend, but we will have to see what happens. I am not ruling out McLaren, because we have seen them struggle in qualifying before and then they are strong in the race. We developed the car well in the morning and during qualifying we made a further set-up change in between the runs and that made me quicker."

Rubens Barrichello:
"Things did not go too smoothly in this qualifying session. I had to abort my second run with a power steering problem and the team started to set-up the spare car with my settings in case I was going to need it. For my third run, I stuck with my race car and I did actually manage to improve my time. However, on my last lap, the yellow flags came out and that stopped me from improving my grid position. At least starting ahead of our main rivals on the grid is a good thing for the race."

Ross Brawn:
"It was an excellent session for Michael, particularly as he was not able to do the full practice this morning. He was happy with the car. Rubens had a messy session. It was our fault as there was a problem with the power steering on one of his runs. It took us a while to work out what had happened and to fix it. It's not too bad to be either side of the two Williams and it's great to be ahead of the McLarens. It will be a complex and interesting race tomorrow, with the different tyres, with Michelin and Bridgestone runners adopting different strategies."

- Ferrari