Motor Racing: Cloudburst gives hope to Ferrari

IT RAINED in Suzuka yesterday afternoon, but the change in weather came too late to prevent Michael Schumacher galloping round the sinuous circuit to place his Ferrari on provisional pole position.

The day had begun with unseasonably fine sunshine, which persisted throughout the two hour-long sessions, but the brief rain shower inevitably increased speculation that a wet race might well hand Schumacher his third World drivers' title, and Ferrari its first since the South African Jody Scheckter was crowned back in 1979. In 1994 Schumacher finished a close second to an inspired Damon Hill in a race run in monsoon conditions, and a year later, while winning his second championship with Benetton, he left all others flailing in his damp wake.

Reports predict clement weather again for qualifying, but there is a 20 per cent chance of rain tomorrow. "I don't really care either way," Schumacher said. "But if I had a choice I'd opt for a dry race."

After all the talking and testing, Ferrari and McLaren, Schumacher and Hakkinen, finally met again in action on the track after the four-week lay-off. As expected, the two giants went toe-to-toe, with Hakkinen initially edging out Schumacher by a scant seven-hundredths of a second after the morning's hour-long session. Friday is traditionally the day on which the teams set-up their chassis and begin to assess which of two tyre options to pursue on Saturday morning's `last-chance' run prior to qualifying.

When practice resumed yesterday afternoon, Schumacher turned the tables on McLaren, boosting Ferrari by ending the day almost a second clear of Hakkinen. However, neither he nor sporting director Jean Todt was getting carried away.

"We got through all the work on our programme for today and made some good progress with the set-up of the car," Schumacher reported. "Of course I'm happy to be on today's provisional pole position, but I don't think today's result shows the whole truth and therefore I expect qualifying to be very close tomorrow. But I believe we are competitive."

"The situation looks quite good," Todt conceded. "But we now have to check the tyre choice carefully as we have not yet reached a decision and this area will be a critical factor in the race."

McLaren ended the day in only fifth and sixth places, and motored into their customary information cul-de-sac. "As always we are concentrating on our race set-up, which means lap times are immaterial at this stage," said Ron Dennis, the TAG McLaren group managing director. "They purely reflect difficulties with traffic and yellow flags."

What he meant was that Hakkinen had focused on some laps with plenty of fuel on board, and had then met traffic on his fastest lap. The Finn was comfortably faster than Schumacher in the first and second timed sectors of the track, only to lose ground in the third, when he came upon Argentine driver Esteban Tuero's Minardi.

Hakkinen shrugged off the incident, saying: "The car ran reliably, it was strong and we completed a good number of laps, so I am very pleased."