Ferrari not strong enough

The excuses for less than expected results in the Monaco Grand Prix are being well-aired, with Ron Dennis blaming Jacques Villeneuve for holding up Kimi Raikkonen, David Coulthard having a moan about being stuck behind Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher blaming his car. Michael Schumacher, who finished third, added his reasons to explain away his less than great race.

The hapless Trulli was also on his list of woes, along with fuel strategy: "If I hadn't been stuck behind Trulli, I guess I could have kept the situation closer with Kimi and I probably would have been able to get him," said the Ferrari driver. "But our strategy was to go for a long first stint and that meant having more fuel, which is why I was behind him."

Schumacher qualified fifth and teammate Rubens Barrichello seventh which was not the best of places to start. They may have been running heavy fuel but the qualifying result was definitely not what was expected. After freeing himself from Trulli with the first round of pit stops, Schumacher still couldn't catch front runners Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen.

"You always hope for better but actually it was quite reasonable to end up third," the German commented, adding Bridgestone to his troubles. "It is fair to say that on the tyre side we didn't look too good this weekend. We tried everything but we have to say that this weekend we probably were not strong enough."

Michelin undoubtedly had the upper hand in the tyre war at Monaco -- in qualifying the two Ferraris were the only Bridgestone runners in the top ten while in the race, only Jordan's Giancarlo Fisichella joined the Ferraris to make three Bridgestone drivers in the top ten. "If you look at our pace we were not far off but we were not in front and I would put that down to the tyres," said Schumacher. Maybe he should have stuck with the scooter.

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments