Schumi: Today wasn't that promising!

Michael Schumacher's run to second place at Imola had many pundits predicting a return to the top step in Spain, but early indications are that Ferrari may have a bit more work to do if success is to come that early.

On the evidence of day one in Barcelona, the Scuderia needs to find more pace from its F2005, with Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello failing to make the top ten in the combined free practice times.

"Our performance today did not look very promising," the world champion admitted, "We must now analyse all the data to see in what areas we can improve the car.

"Tomorrow morning's work will involve the usual job of finding the right compromise between being quick over a single lap for qualifying and being able to maintain a strong race pace. We did plenty of laps today, so we have all the data we need to achieve that."

Barrichello's morning session was halted by another mechanical problem, this time with the hydraulic system, but the Brazilian was sufficiently buoyed by his afternoon performance to predict that things may not be as bad as the timesheets suggest.

"I did some good runs which produced plenty of useful data, and I think that overall, we are not in as bad shape as seems to be the case if you just look at the times," he confirmed, "We know what small changes we can make to the car to be much stronger."

The team appears to have decided which type of Bridgestone tyre it is going to use, leaving the evening free to discuss the tweaks that are needed to close the gap on McLaren and Renault.

"We had some technical problems today, which slowed our programme slightly, but the team recovered well and we made up for lost time in the afternoon," technical director Ross Brawn insisted, "I hope the rest of the weekend goes smoothly.

"We did the usual comparison between the two types of Bridgestone tyre and I think it is pretty clear which way we have to go. I think we can have a good race pace, but the challenge will be in doing a similarly good first qualifying lap and work on that will start tomorrow morning."