Ralf Schumacher started 8th on the grid and he was able to avoid the carnage at the start. He ran another strong race and held 5th place when he was forced to retire with a bearing failure on his front left wheel just ten laps from home.
Ralf commented, "Today we were looking good for a strong points finish until our problem late on. I had a very long brake pedal so I had to come in. Then the team found that we had a wheel bearing failure on our front left. It was a very difficult race today because it was so hot out there. I also had a hard job keeping the car balanced because there was a slight difference in grip levels between my sets of tyres so that made it more difficult to drive. The failure was unfortunate because I was in a comfortable 5th place and those points would have been great news for the team. Nevertheless our performance this weekend shows that the development of our car is very advanced. But we need to keep pushing for reliability as we search for more points in the coming races."
Team boss Tsutomu Tomita added: " Of course it hurts that we had another retirement with Ralf. It's a pity that he had a wheel bearing failure because he ran a very good race. We must now push to continue our development programme so we can catch them. We haven't given up on our aim of winning our first race this season."
