Shanghai, 29th September 2006

With Felipe Massa fourth and Michael Schumacher fifth on the time sheet for today's second session, everything would seem to be going well for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro here in Shanghai. Especially when one considers that the pairing are the first of "race" drivers on the time sheet, with the top three places belonging to Friday-only men; Alex Wurz for Williams, Sebastian Vettel for BMW-Sauber and Anthony Davidson for Honda.

But although the F248 is obviously very competitive here, with both our drivers happy with their day's work, Felipe Massa will drop ten places on the grid from his actual qualifying position, as the engine in his car developed a problem that required having it changed. The two title contenders seem closely matched, even in free practice, as the Renault of Fernando Alonso is right behind Michael in sixth place. The weather made any real analysis of the situation difficult as overcast skies turned to actual light rain during the afternoon hour.


It seems that hardly a race goes by now without a new name appearing on the time sheets: this weekend, we have the German GP2 driver, Michael Ammermuller replacing Robert Doornbos as Red Bull Racing third driver, because the Dutchman has been promoted to the race drive, in the place of Christian Klien. Another GP 2 man, Alex Premat has picked up the role of third driver in the former MF1 team, now running its first full weekend under its new name of Spyker. More rain is predicted for tomorrow, which could make for a very interesting afternoon of qualifying, while a dry morning session will see all the teams out on track, anxious to make up for the time lost in the damp this afternoon.