NOVEMBER 13, 1995

Schumacher to test a Ferrari this week

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER flew out of Adelaide on Monday morning, bound for Europe where he is due to drive a Formula 1 Ferrari for the first term at the team's Fiorano test track on Thursday. The run in Italy is only to make sure that a seat which has been made for Michael is correct before he has his first serious run in a Ferrari 412 T2 at Estoril on Monday, November 20.

The Fiorano test will be part of a press launch for the 1996 Ferrari team, during which Schumacher and Eddie Irvine will be presented to the media.

It has yet to be decided who will be engineering Schumacher at races next year. Current race engineers are Ignazio Lunetta and Luca Balderisseri, who work under the control of Giorgio Ascanelli.

In recent weeks Ascanelli has been trying to lure McLaren engineer Pat Fry to join Ferrari to act as Schumacher's engineer. Fry and Ascanelli worked together at both Benetton and McLaren and are close friends but Pat is under contract with McLaren until the end of 1996, and says that he is not planning to break his contract. However, McLaren has recently hired Williams's top race engineer David Brown to look after David Coulthard next year, and with the vastly experienced Steve Hallam expected to engineer the second car, there would not seem to be room for Fry to stay at McLaren.

Schumacher, incidentally, seems to have convinced Ferrari's top engineer John Barnard to attend all the races next year.