Michael Schumacher is confident Mercedes and himself can fight at the top, and challenge for the title.
With recent criticism coming from Eddie Jordan, describing Schumacher as ‘out of his mind’ for returning to Formula One, the German has reassured fans that the reason he has returned, is because he feels he can win another title.
When asked about being able to challenging for the title, he replied: “Absolutely, yes. This is what I am here for. I strongly believe we can fight at the top.
“I think none of us drivers will feel our preparation was enough, but that is just normal: give us 40 days, we want 80,” Schumacher told his official site.
“You always have the feeling you could do more, and a lot of the test days have been strongly handicapped by the weather. It is valuable time you are losing, which would be very important for the development of the car.
“But all in all I am very happy with our preparation, as our focus was on reliability and internal processes. We worked very efficiently. I am looking very much forward to the start of the season now.”
When asked about the new regulations for 2010, Schumacher identified tyres as the key area for concern. The tyre allocation has been reduced from seven of each, to just six of the ‘prime’ and five of the ‘option’.
“Saving tyres will be an important factor. You will have less sets of tyres available than last year, which makes it harder to do what you need to do for setting up the car perfectly,” he explained. “But driving is always about adapting to new circumstances, and this is one of my strong points. I would say the biggest difference is the tyres. You will have to develop a good feeling for them.”
