French GP: Ferrari Friday practice notes

Free practice affected by the changeable weather

Jean Todt:

"The French Grand Prix signals the start of the second half of the season. This is a special race for me as I certainly cannot forget that it was here on 1st July eleven years ago that I began my career with Ferrari. Today was affected by the changeable weather. The alternating rain and sun has led the FIA to put back the deadline by when all drivers have to make a tyre choice to midday tomorrow."

"In any case, with the few laps we managed to do, we were able to get a rough idea of the situation which will be able to evaluate it in greater depth in tomorrow's free practice. We know we can count on a competitive car-engine-Bridgestone tyre package, but it will be interesting to see how we perform relative to our rivals, given that some teams have brought out heavily revised cars here."

Michael Schumacher:

"A rather different Friday to normal and we were not able to run much because of the weather. We decided there was little point in running in the wet as the forecast is for dry weather over the next two days. We preferred to only go out in the dry and we did manage to sort out the car a little bit. But to be honest, I did not get much of a feeling as to how it is going."

Rubens Barrichello:

"It was not a difficult day because the weather meant we did very few laps. The car was okay this morning and in the second session I only went out on used tyres so it is hard to have an impression of how the car is performing. We will have to wait until tomorrow to define the right car set-up and tyre choice."

Ross Brawn:

"The weather meant that it was very difficult to get any conclusive data. In fact the FIA has given the teams the option of deferring tyre choice until 12 o'clock tomorrow. This means we will still be allowed to run both types of tyre tomorrow morning during free practice. The weather forecast for tomorrow is dry so it should be possible to assess the dry weather tyres. Our car was okay from what we could see. We chose not to run in the wet as the forecast for the rest of the weekend is dry and we did not see the point in using up too much engine mileage.'

Rubens Barrichello
chassis 240
Practice session 1: 1st, 1:15.487, 4 laps
Practice session 2: 10th, 1:17.094 5 laps

Michael Schumacher
chassis 239
Practice session 1: 2nd, 1:15.713, 4 laps
Practice session 2: 5th, 1:16.397, 7 laps

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