New Ferrari not reliable enough yet

The decision by Ferrari to not run the F2003-GA at the San Marino Grand Prix was down to reliability issues, according to Michael Schumacher. The new car has been fast in testing but the champion thinks it's not worth taking the risk until it's completely trustworthy.

Michael Schumacher in Ferrari garage.

Photo by Brousseau Photo.

"It's not yet 100 percent reliable," Schumacher told the Italian press about the F2003-GA. "It'll be a big step forwards in terms of performance, but there's no point in taking the risk." The car suffered some engine problems in testing last week.

Ferrari has not had the greatest start to the season by its own standards, but Schumacher denied that success in recent years has made the team complacent: "You've only to see the new car and the work that's been done to improve the old one to know that's not true," he said.

The German puts Ferrari's disappointing results in the first three races as mostly down to bad luck: "The difference is that we've been unlucky," he commented on the gap between performance this year and last.

"At the Australian Grand Prix it was the weather, in Brazil we fell foul of the new regulations. Only in Malaysia were we clearly slower, but that was also the case last year."

Quite how the new regulations were responsible for Schumacher spinning off and Barrichello developing a fuel feed problem, resulting in neither of them finishing in Brazil, is not clear. However, Ferrari was not too happy with some other teams being allowed to make changes to cars between qualifying and the race.