MICHAEL SCHUMACHER goes into the most important race of his season in front of his home crowd at Hockenheim on Sunday confident that he can put pressure on the dominant Williams-Renaults of Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.

However, at the same time he is wondering whether his troublesome Ferrari will last more than a handful of laps, let alone the full brace.

Schumacher has not finished a race since winning the rain-soaked Spanish grand prix at Barcelona two months ago, having endured ignominious retirements with major mechanical problems in the last three races.

Yet with more than 100,000 of his fans set to cram the Hockenheim grandstands on Sunday afternoon, the reigning world champion is hoping that last week's intensive test programme at Monza will improve reliability.

Last year Schumacher won the German race commandingly at the wheel of his Benetton-Renault after Hill's Williams spun off at the beginning of the second lap. This weekend, Ferrari's star signing will be keeping his fingers crossed that he lasts even that far.

Yet although Schumacher's Ferrari will appear at the German race fitted with a new aerodynamic undertray and revised rear suspension, it will still be without the long overdue seven-speed, gearbox which the German driver believes would prove a major advantage on the long Hockenheim straights.

"The new undertray makes the car's downforce more consistent," he said. "It is now much easier to driver over the bumps and, in this configuration, I anticipate we will be able to put pressure even on the Williams team.

"The test went as well as always. It looked pretty good, by then we're always very good in testing and we're not finishing races. But I'm very happy with the pace and handling of the car on high speed circuits, so if it holds together we should be on the pace at Hockenheim.

"I expect to be competitive, but there is a big question mark over whether we can finish."

Ferrari's sporting director Jean Todt added: "Our goal at the test was reliability. We wanted to push at the start of the season and possibly lost a little of the reliability. We will improve the quality control and the organisation, but we're not yet able to understand why the component on Schumacher's car failed at Silverstone.

Even before Schumacher was able to assess the new gearbox at Monza, it suffered a breakage while testing in the hands of Eddie Irvine and was taken back to the team's Maranello headquarters for a detailed examination.

Ferrari's technicians concluded that the failure of the gearbox oil pump was due to vibrations from the V10 engine and there is no way the team will risk using it at Hockenheim, where the cars run at sustained high revs for a large percentage of each lap, preferring instead to rely on the more proven six-speed transmission.

Todt also hinted that he would be attempting to increase the level of collaboration between the Ferrari headquarters and its UK-based design studio run by technical director John Barnard. Some critics blame the geographical and administrative distance between the two departments as a fundamental weakness of Ferrari's current F1 effort.

Any repeat of the Silverstone debacle is sure to put pressure on for the team to return its design base to Maranello, a potentially contentious issue which would also risk Barnard taking the decision to quit the team.