Teamwork key for Ferrari in Germany.

Although Ferrari may not be right up at the front fighting for the drivers' and constructors' championship, the team heads to Germany this weekend determined to try and fight for victory in the latest round of the Formula One championship at Hockenheim.

Reigning champion Michael Schumacher may be having to watch on as Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen fight for his crown, but the German can still count on the support of the Scuderia - and especially the crew who work on the #1 car throughout the season.

The most obvious point of contact between driver and team is his race engineer, however, as the amount of telemetric data available has grown over the years, the driver and race engineer now work with a vehicle engineer, whose job it is to analyse all the data coming off the car.

In Schumacher's case that role falls to Andrea Stella.

"My job and that of the race engineer are complementary," he says. "While the race engineer lives in the garage or on the pit wall, I am glued to the computer screens studying the telemetry data to understand how the car is performing, what are the handling issues, the braking performance and the traction of the car. Having studied all the data, I then have to correlate it with our driver's comments.

"It is a two way communication between me and the driver. Together we try and assess the overall situation with the car, looking to find areas where we have to improve the set-up, both mechanical and aerodynamic. Another important part of my job is to set up the traction control and engine braking and the differential, which are the 'active' systems that we have running in the car."

Based on this analysis, Stella then discusses his findings along with Schumacher's race engineer, Chris Dyer.

"It is a team job and Michael is very open to suggestions and to discussion," Stella continues. "Most of our solutions come from discussion within the team and that is a very enjoyable way of working.

"Michael has a very good understanding of the car and this makes our life much easier in a way, because he can give you not only the feeling he has from actually driving the car, but also the feeling on which direction we should go in terms of setting up the car. In fact, I think he could almost engineer his own car!"

For Hockenheim, Ferrari will be introducing a new aerodynamic package for the F2005 in an effort to take the challenge to Renault and McLaren - with Stella adding that it was a sign that the champions aren't giving up their titles without a fight.

"This proves that Ferrari is still pushing with the development programme on the F2005 and we have certainly not given up," he said. "For every race we usually have
something new because we are still fighting to win, whatever the current situation in the championships. In this situation, when we have new components, I have seen all the data produced from testing with them. We have a lot of very specialised engineers to look after specific areas on the car, while my job is more related to the overall car-tyre-performance package."

While it is Schumacher who will have to deal with the challenges of negotiating 67 laps of the Hockenheim circuit, he will be helped in no small part by Stella back in the pit garage - the technician well aware of what is needed to get a good lap around the venue.

"In a way the old Hockenheim, with its very long straights, was more challenging technically, but the current circuit also has its own interesting points," he said. "To get a good lap time here, you need good braking, good traction and cars that possess these characteristics will perform very well. There is an overtaking opportunity, at the hairpin, so this makes the racing interesting here.

"The track surface gets very hot, which makes life tough for the tyres. This is a constraint that prevents us running a tyre that is softer, which ideally is what you want for good braking and traction. The Stadium area is still very interesting for the drivers and also for spectators. The set-up you now use for the complex is actually similar to the rest of the track, whereas in the past, you had to face the big challenge of getting the cars to work in the Stadium with the very low downforce you had to adopt for the
long straights.

"I like the last two corners, which is effectively one long corner, as it is very important for a good lap time. The drivers never seem to tackle it the same way lap after lap. In some corners, drivers take an identical approach for every lap. With Michael, it is definitely different each time as he has a tendency to improve every lap, which is one of his trademarks, improving all the time, getting nearer and nearer to the limits of the car.

"This is the third year I have worked on Michael's car, having started at Monza in 2002. I think for sure, he wants to do very well in Hockenheim, because it is his
home race and also, because he still wants to win every race he enters. One can also consider that, earlier this year, he did not have a good race at the Nurburgring and he would like to make up for that.

"Working with Michael is always a pleasure, because not only does he have a good understanding of what the car is doing, but also he can give you feedback while driving round the track. He can talk you round a lap in great detail as to what the car is doing, but the lap time will be no different to when he drives a lap in silence. I have the impression that while most drivers need nearly all their brainpower to drive the car and can only use a tiny percentage to analyse what the car is doing, Michael can perform at his maximum using only 50 per cent of his brain, leaving the other 50 per cent to think about what the car is doing and to analyse it."