NEWS

A Difficult Race But Points

[10 July 2005]

Michael Schumacher took the chequered flag in sixth position today at the British Grand Prix but as was the case at Magny Cours one week ago, it was not just the race result that was not ideal, but the race pace. Schumacher finished 75-seconds behind the race winner with team-mate Rubens Barrichello unable to make much of his three stop strategy close behind.

Schumacher was not happy after the race stating that the team seem to be going in the wrong direction. Barrichello meanwhile reported that he had some braking issues for the second successive race.

Michael Schumacher
“Of course, I cannot be happy to have finished sixth, especially looking at my lap times in the race. Clearly, we are simply not fast enough at the moment. If I had not been delayed by Trulli, I might have been able to fight with Button, but I am not keen on using the word “if” as an excuse. If you compare our performance from the two North American races to these last two, we appear to be going backwards instead of forwards. We are not up to the level of our competitors. I am still looking forward to my home race in Hockenheim, but I wish I could promise the fans there a bit more than this.”

Rubens Barrichello:
“This was quite a difficult race. Basically, we did not have the pace which we thought we might have. I made a good start and I knew I had to pass Trulli at this point if my race was going to go to plan. It was all going pretty smoothly apart from the fact I was held up by Button which cost me time. This meant that the three stop strategy I had adopted did not work out the way it should have done. I had some brake problems, as at Magny-Cours. But seeing how the race evolved, I don’t think I could have done much better.”

Jean Todt:
“I said yesterday that we could expect a difficult race and that getting both our cars home in the points was our only realistic target. Unfortunately, that is how things turned out. We are not capable of matching the pace of the leaders and the final result is a reasonably accurate reflection of the current pecking order here at Silverstone today. The only satisfying point to take away from here is the level of reliability we demonstrated this afternoon.”

Ross Brawn:
“Obviously this was a disappointing race. We went through practice and qualifying hoping that it would all come together in the race, but once again today, it was difficult. Our drivers were reasonably happy with their cars, it’s just that they simply lacked overall pace. There were no particular problems, although there were a couple of stages when we got held up, including the early part when Michael got delayed by Trulli, but I am not sure that we could have done better.”