Brawn doesn't know if the Pirelli tires will help Schumacher

It is too early to know whether F1's move from sole supplier Bridgestone to Italian supplier Pirelli will allow Schumacher to be more competitive in the 2011 championship.

This is what Ross Brawn admitted, the head of the Mercedes GP team who managed to convince the former 7-time world champion Michael Schumacher to get back into the driving seat in a single-seater last season, who has 2 seasons left to reach end of contract.

The German celebrated his forty-second birthday this week, but Brawn didn't bring him any gifts: “I don't have to think about what gift to give him, because I already know what he needs: a more competitive car for this year. I'm sure that this year we will be stronger” declared the Englishman to the Gazzetta dello Sport.

In recent months the idea has emerged that Schumacher was not very comfortable with the current Bridgestone tyres, and that he would probably have benefited from the switch to Pirelli tyres.

But according to Brawn it is still too early to say: during the tests held after the end of the championship in Abu Dhabi, no major differences were recorded by changing tire supplier. However, Brawn himself explains that: “It is clear that by changing supplier the tires behave differently, and the cars need different settings to be able to highlight the real performance differences. We will work on this this winter, and only then will we be able to say whether differences will have become apparent.”

Returning to Schumacher, we report the words of Ferrari president Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who had joked about the unconvincing performances of his former driver once he returned to F1, suggesting that perhaps it wasn't him who was driving, but his twin brother: "I think that Michael isn't very happy with what his twin did in the season that just ended. Nonetheless, if we had been able to field a third car, he would certainly have been driving."

Gian Maria Di Stefano