Rubens Barrichello faced the world’s media at the Scuderia Ferrari Motorhome at the Catalunya track and a big smile appeared on the Brazilian’s face when he was asked when he would win a grand prix.

'I don’t think Michael will win all eighteen races this year,' he laughed. 'I just have to stay calm and be ready to take my chance. Last year, we saw a similar pattern in that I was much stronger from the mid-point of the season onwards.' Barrichello was keen to stress that he was not finding the F2004 difficult to drive. 'In fact it is easier to drive than last year’s car,' he maintained. 'As you know, I don’t like to talk about good luck and bad luck, but I feel I need more time in the car, because I have been unlucky in terms of the weather when I have been testing. I have not done as much driving in the dry as I would have liked. This means that although the F2004 is better than the F2003-GA, I have not yet found the settings to adapt it perfectly to my driving style. Having said that, it is clear that Michael has been very strong so far this year, but I am certainly not any worse than I was in 2003.'

Looking back at the last race, the Brazilian feels he had a car that was good enough to finish second behind his team-mate. 'But the start did not go so well for me and then I had problems with traffic. Analysing our performance in general, I would say we are strong in qualifying and for the majority of the race. Our one slight weakness in Imola was that our tyres took a little bit too long to come to the right temperature at the start of the race, compared with those of our closest rivals.' The Ferrari man expects those rivals to be even closer this weekend. 'The BAR team has been very strong at this circuit in testing and so, given their performance in the last couple of races, we expect them to be even closer to us here. I also think Renault will be good and Williams seems to be improving, although I do not expect McLaren to be in a position to pose a threat yet.'