Schumacher: I just lost concentration

Michael Schumacher has accepted the blame for the incident that saw him go off into the barriers in second free practice for the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim.

The Mercedes man was caught out in wet conditions with just minutes left of the second session, spinning on the entrance of the stadium section of the circuit and going heavily into the barriers.

The incident caused damage to all four corners of his car and brought out the red flag and Schumacher admitted he had lost concentration at the time the accident occurred.

"The way I ended the second session was obviously not part of the plan and I'm sorry that my mistake has given my guys even more work to do this evening," he said. "I simply slid off track because I lost a little concentration: we were talking on the radio and I was altering some settings at the same time. But that's all part of the game.

"Overall, the session went ok, even though we didn't do too much running in the first session because the conditions were a bit too inconsistent. I think that qualifying will probably be wet tomorrow, so today's weather was useful in that respect. Now we need to do more work on the computer to tease out the insights we weren't able to get from our track running."

Schumacher ended the day with the fourth quickest time, although he was only 23rd in the second wet session with Pedro de la Rosa the only man slower than him.