However, Williams strongly opposed the idea, while soon followed by the two Red Bull backed teams. Being in contradiction with F1's 2009 rule book, the three teams also argued such a decision would be unfair in comparison to what happened to 19-year old Jaime Alguersuari 2 weekends ago.
Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz insisted that, as his team's request to allow Alguarsuari – who had never driven an F1 car before – test prior to his outing at Hungaroring was rejected by the FOTA, so should Ferrari's for Michael Schumacher.
In response, Ferrari slammed Frank Williams for lack of fair play, as he accused the 69-year old Brit for denying both Schumacher and Alguersuari of some proper testing ahead of their F1 return/debut. The Scuderia also revealed they agreed with the 19-year old Spaniard's conducting a full test before stepping into the STR4 at the Hungaroring.
“Guess who opposed the test with the F60? A team that hasn't won anything for years and yet didn't pass over the opportunity to demonstrate once more a lack of spirit of fair play,” said Ferrari in a statement on their official site.
“Just for the record, the Scuderia Ferrari had given its approval to let Alguersuari test, but it seems even in this instance someone decided to stick to the precise wording of the regulations,” added the statement.
In addition, Schumacher's spokeswoman Sabine Kehm revealed nobody at Maranello was ever optimistic about their chances to secure a full test for the 40-year old German. “From the beginning it was clear that in all probability there would not be a test with the new car,” admitted Kehm for the Blickpunkt Sport programme.
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