But although Eddie Irvine, Schumacher’s No 2, had won the opening race in Australia, while the team leader himself had finished second in Brazil, they knew that they were lagging behind the performance of the McLaren-Mercedes combine, who had spent the winter developing an even faster version of last year’s all-conquering car.For most of the weekend, Schumacher seemed subdued, almost morose. Either he was depressed about Ferrari’s continued failure to match McLaren’s progress, or he had caught the bug which was afflicting several members of his team. He made the right noises about a new nose-wing that he tested at the team’s private track on Thursday, and was as careful as usual not to raise expectations too high. But he seemed to lack conviction, and the pessimistic mood was underlined when Irvine remarked to journalists that he had been “more than disheartened” to discover that their cars were no closer to the McLarens.”We’ve made some improvements,” Schumacher said after Friday’s practice sessions.

“But in Formula One things never stand still, and it depends how much improvement other teams have made, particularly McLaren. We need to know whether we’ve moved forwards, or stayed where we are, or gone backwards. After Sunday afternoon we’ll know exactly what is the situation. It’s important that we don’t always have two McLarens in front of us, that we at least beat one of them.”In Saturday’s qualifying session Schumacher practically drove the wheels off his car in an attempt to match the McLarens, showing sensational courage and commitment but still ending up behind Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard on the grid.

But the gap was less than two-tenths of a second – which, compared with the car’s performance in Brazil, meant that he had found eight-tenths of a second somewhere. “It’s closer than I had expected,” he said, still sounding downbeat “But I’m a bit disappointed with my own performance I didn’t manage to drive a perfect lap. I could have gone better, and pole position was within my reach This means we are in good shape for tomorrow. Let’s wait and see what happens.”No one at Ferrari knows Schumacher better than the team’s technical director, Ross Brawn, an Englishman who worked with the driver during his championship seasons at Benetton and who moved to Maranello, taking a bunch of key technicians with him, two years ago. “There’s an element of frustration,” Brawn said after the qualifying session, “because Michael came to Ferrari to win the world championship and we haven’t achieved that yet.