Michael Schumacher is determined to put Ferrari back on a winning track after last year's disastrous season.
Speaking between tests on his new Ferrari, the German driver told the press that "our goal can only be winning the drivers' and constructors' championship".
"It is going to be a long and difficult season and it's important we get points right off the bat, and not fall
behind as we did last year," he added.
Ferrari failed to win the constructors' championship in 2005 after taking it six years in a row, while Schumacher's five-year title streak with the Italian team ended last year. Both the team and the driver ended up placing third in their respective championships after winning only one race, the USA Grand Prix.
Ferrari was dethroned by Renault and Schumacher, who won his first two ttiels in a Renault-powered Benetton, by Spain's Fernando Alonso. Schumacher has made it clear he will decide at mid-season whether or not he intends to retire from racing and, if he does continue to race, whether he will stay at Ferrari.
Speaking at Ferrari's first pre-season press conference, the 37-year-old driver said "if I do decide to continue, I can tell you now that it is 99%, make it 99.9%, sure I will stay with Ferrari".
The reason it was not 100% sure he would stay with Ferrari, Schumacher explained, was because "I do not even want take into consideration repeating a season like the last one. I'm not saying I want to win, but I to want to at least contend for the title".
Schumacher's current contract expires at the end of 2006, as does that of Finland's Kimi Raikkonen, the McLaren driver pundits see as the German's natural successor at Ferrari. There has also been speculation that MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi may decide to switch to four wheels and join Ferrari.
However, after tests with the Italian team the popular rider admitted that Formula 1 was "a completely different world" from motorcycling. "It's like being on another planet. It's like a soccer player switching to basketball. The sensations are all different," he said.
Nevertheless, some pundits remain convinced that Rossi, who has little left to prove in MotoGP after winning the last five titles, is attracted by the challenge of successfully making a switch which only one man, Britain's John Surtees, has ever done before.
Surtees won four world motorcycling titles before switching to cars in 1960. In 1964, at the age of 30, he won
a world title driving a Ferrari. The 2006 Formula 1 season will start March 12 in Bahrain.
