Tenth time for Michael Schumacher and fifteenth for Rubens Barrichello does not look like the best result for Scuderia Ferrari at the end of the first day of practice for the British Grand Prix.

However, apart from the usual unknown factors on a Friday: what tyres the opposition are running and what fuel loads the cars have on board, the Ferrari engineers added another factor to the equation today. As usual Bridgestone provided the Scuderia with two different types of dry weather tyre, of which they must choose one to use for the rest of the weekend, prior to tomorrow’s qualifying. However, as the team was not that familiar with these tyres, it was decided that the best way to get meaningful data was to run the new tyres in parallel during the morning session, so that they would be used in identical track conditions. Inevitably therefore, running old rubber in the afternoon, when most of the top teams still had new tyres in reserve was always going to have a negative effect on lap times. Nevertheless, both Michael and Rubens were happy with their day’s work and the Brazilian felt that the team would be more competitive here in England, than in Magny-Cours five days ago.

Two teams dominated the top six today, with first, third and fourth places going to the McLaren-Mercedes of Pedro de la Rosa, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen, while second, fifth and sixth spots went to the Toyotas of Ricardo Zonta, Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli.

Jean Todt : “The terrible events in London yesterday serve to remind us how lucky everyone is who works in Formula 1. Here we are at Silverstone today, but it is hard to put yesterday’s events out of our mind. They also show how unimportant is the bickering that occasionally takes place in our own little world when compared to tragedies like this. As for what happened on the track, there is not much to say. We carried out the usual programme of finding the best set-up and comparing the two types of tyre at out disposal. It is too early to make any predictions. Now the ball is in the engineers’ court: they must analyse the data from these two hours of practice, when ambient and track temperatures were rather low.”
 

Michael Schumacher : “Today, we did a lot of laps and pretty much finished our planned programme and now we have to study all the data to make our tyre choice. I have to say the long runs we did were not too bad, although that was also the case on Friday in Magny-Cours. We will have to wait and see how things develop and so I don’t want to make any predictions for the rest of the weekend.”

Rubens Barrichello : “We decided to use the new tyres only in the morning, which explains why our lap times did not look so good this afternoon. But I am quite happy with the balance of the car, although there is room for improvement, as I have some understeer. Apart from that I think we should be a little bit more competitive than we were last weekend in Magny-Cours.”

Ross Brawn : “We improved the balance of the car this afternoon, as it had not been too good this morning. Because we do not have much experience of the Bridgestone tyres we have here, we altered the way we carried out our tyre evaluation. This meant we tried the two types of tyre in parallel, and therefore we did not use any new tyres this afternoon. We can be happy with the times on the long runs, during which the tyre performance was consistent. We had a bit of graining initially, but that will not be the case on Sunday. Now we just have to decide which type of tyre to use for qualifying and the race.”

Free practice - First session: Michael Schumacher: 7th 1.21.453 9 laps chassis 245; Rubens Barrichello: 9th 1.22.216 9 laps chassis 246; Temperatures: air 19/18 °C, track 25/23 °C

Free practice – Second session; Michael Schumacher: 10th 1.21.044 21 laps chassis 245; Rubens Barrichello: 15th 1.21.519 21 laps chassis 246; Temperatures: air 18 °C, track 23 °C