Schumacher scents victory in new car

As hope goes, technical director Ross Brawn did his best to hold out some to Ferrari's rivals yesterday on the eve of the competition debut of the world champion team's new car.

The F2003-GA, type-numbered in honour of the Fiat patriarch, Gianni Agnelli, who died earlier this year, has been in testing for months but has only recently been judged ready to take its bow. Two accidents befell the test driver, Luca Badoer, but earlier this week Badoer shook down a brace of the new cars at Ferrari's private test track in Fiorano. Michael Schumacher, who has his young family with him here this weekend, admitted that his first sight of the car left him speechless. His team-mate, Rubens Barrichello, said, "I couldn't take my eyes off it."

Brawn said: "Reliability has been the real criterion over the car's debut. As we did last year, we didn't start designing a new car until we had full confidence in the performance parameters we wanted to set for it, so the schedule meant we would not have it for the first few races. Then we had a couple of unexpected problems in testing, and in any case the old car was still competitive. If that had lacked competitiveness, that would have been a difficult call.

"We had a very good test at Mugello last week – we did 3,000 km, including three race simulations, without any major problems. What happens in that situation is that the old car gets no development and it slowly fades away, so it's important we get running with the new car as soon as possible."

Nobody doubts the new car is quicker than the old, which was fast enough for Schumacher to dominate the recent San Marino Grand Prix despite his family bereavement. "But," pointed out Brawn, "we still have to learn it. You start to understand a car much more when you go racing with it, no matter how much testing you do. But our expectations are that we will be competitive."

This is rather like Mike Tyson saying he thinks one of his punches might hurt, or a meteorologist expecting rain will be wet.

"I was looking at the 2002 race on video last week," continued Brawn, "and even with our new car I would be very surprised to be able to enjoy the sort of dominant race that Michael had here last year. The different tyre characteristics will be interesting during different phases of the race."

BMW-Williams and McLaren-Mercedes will be quick here, but the odds favour Ferrari. Brawn says the old car fitted like a glove and the team has to relearn the responses of the new one. But Schumacher is smiling again, and he can scent victory yet again.