Before the race, Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher led the Drivers' Championship with 68 points ahead of McLaren's David Coulthard (44 points) in second. Rubens Barrichello (26 points) in the second Ferrari was third and Williams driver Ralf Schumacher in fourth was one point behind in the battle for the position. The other Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya completed the top five in the standings with 12 points. In the Constructors' Championship Ferrari led with 94 points, with a 41-point gap over their nearest rivals McLaren in second. With 37 points, Williams were in third position and Sauber (15 points) and Jordan (13 points) contended for fourth place. In preparation for the Grand Prix, the Ferrari team tested its chassis, the F2001, the only constructor to do so. The outfit conducted a six-hour and 45-minute shakedown session on 28 June at the Fiorano Circuit with their test driver, Luca Badoer, who drove to test the functionality of the car electrical system and also concentrated on launch control system practice starts. After an FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting in Paris on 27 June 2001, all of the eleven teams unanimously agreed that starting from this event, any driver who stalled his car on the grid for the formation lap would be barred from using the spare car. The rule was revised to state that any switch into the spare car could only be undertaken fifteen seconds before the commencement of the formation lap and it would avoid any driver incurring a pit lane start. Coulthard had won the 2000 French Grand Prix and spoke of his anticipation that McLaren would be within four-tenths of a second of Ferrari depending on the amount of tyre degradation, "So, in qualifying, again, unless the tyre that we have available to us works well on our car there, I don't think we have something in the set-up that we can change. It's probably something a bit more fundamental." He said that he did not want to be drawn into discussion over the Drivers' Championship and sought to extract his best performance over the rest of the season, " I concentrate on the future because you can't change the past. What we can influence is the future and we won't be affected by the situation that we are in." Michael Schumacher stated his acknowledgement that Coulthard was his main rival for the Drivers' Championship, and took