Ferrari content despite on-track problems.

The Ferrari team ended its first day at the Hungaroring happy with the programmes it had managed to complete, in spite of both Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello suffering problems in the second of two hour-long practice sessions.

Having clocked up the second and fifth fastest times of the opening session, Barrichello in front of his German team-mate on this occasion, the pair were anticipating a strong second hour, but Schumacher saw his plans dashed just a couple of miles into the afternoon, as his F2005 ground to a halt on track.

"My problem was an electrical one, so the only real damage is the fact I was unable to run in the second session," the world champion commented, having had to sit out the entire second session, "Of course, that is not very helpful but, fortunately, Rubens had a good day and, thanks to the data he acquired, I think we know what we want to do in terms of tyres.

"Our performance did not look too bad for a Friday but, because I did so few laps, I will also have to see what I can learn from Rubens' set-up. Of course, I have done enough laps of this track to know what is required, but it is still hard to know what to expect in qualifying. Strategy will be very important here, as always, but I think ours
will look more towards the race than to qualifying."

Barrichello worked his way through the entire second session tyre evaluation, but ended his day in the tyre wall after an error on his final run of the afternoon.

"I was trying a slightly different set-up which, obviously, did not work, as I ran a little bit wide over the kerb," the Brazilian reported, "This meant the car was airborne and, from then, on I was just a passenger.

"Up to that point, it had been a very useful day in terms of what we have learnt about the tyres and how the car behaves at this circuit. I think we are more competitive here than we expected to be."

Technical chief Ross Brawn later revealed that Schumacher's car had suffered from an alternator failure.

"It looks like a mechanical failure of the alternator, so it's a surprise," he said, "It's still being stripped down and examined, but I think either something's got into the alternator and there's been mechanical damage, or there's a fault with the component. It didn't overheat, and the first check, especially in these conditions, is that we have had had a temperature problem.

"We don't know why at the moment - from what we can see from the data, it just stopped working, which meant the car was stranded out on the track. It was a shame as he had just begun his proper tyre comparison over a longer run."

Before his off, Barrichello had set good times on old tyres, leading Brawn to think that the F2005 will be more competitive this weekend than of late.

"Rubens had a good programme today, taking an initial look at both types of tyre in the morning session," he confirmed, "He also did two long runs this afternoon and, thanks to his excellent work, we have plenty of information on which to base our tyre choice for tomorrow and Sunday. If the wear figures, which we'll have this evening, look okay then the tyre choice is really straightforward.

'It looks a bit more competitive. One of the difficulties we've had is translating Friday performance into Sunday afternoon. If we can do that with no drop-off in our performance or, vice versa, no increase in our competitors' performance, then it looks better.

'If you look at Rubens' performance in the afternoon, he was on used tyres, because he used the new ones this morning. He did a 1min 21.9secs on a used tyre. The encouraging thing is the consistency. I don't think anyone else had that level of consistency. But this is Friday, and we know we've been experiencing some variation between Friday and Sunday."

Barrichello ended the day seventh fastest overall, and best of the rest after the pace-setting Toyotas and McLarens. Schumacher's problem left him without a time in session two, and improvements in the track condition meant that his first session time was only good enough for 16th at the end of the day.