Wednesday September 1st, 1999

Michael Schumacher will not race at the Italian Grand Prix next week. The German Ferrari star said this evening that he was still in much pain and will not be able to race a full Grand Prix distance.

Schumacher arrived today at Monza for the first of four days of testing, and was greeted by thousands of fans cheering him and holding signs calling for his return. But after doing several laps around the track, Schumacher said: "The leg gives me too much pain. The problem is not so much the time it takes the injury to heal but rather the location of the injury" - Schumacher suffers from two bone fractures but more so from a very deep cut at the heel of his right foot - an area renowned for high sensitivity.

Schumacher said the track's high-speed course was hard for him to handle, the vibrations from the bumps causing him excessive pain. In the afternoon session, the Ferrari engineers trying to pad the inside of the cockpit to ease Schumacher's position but apparently that did not help him much, as he announced shortly after that he will not be competing in the upcoming Grand Prix. "I must complete a few rounds without any problems or pain before I can actually decide whether to come back or not," said a frustrated Schumacher, "but right now it is easy to see I am not fit to run a full race, so the decision is obvious."

Schumacher was reportedly 1.5 seconds off McLaren's Mika Hakkinen and even 1.5 seconds behind the Williams of his brother Ralf. And it that isn't enough - replacement Mika Salo was about six tenth of a second faster than the German today.