Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug has insisted that he will not be happy until the new works Mercedes GP team is winning grands prix, after another disappointing race weekend for the team at the Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul.
The team's race drivers Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg finished fourth and fifth respectively in the Turkish race, once again running some way off the ultimate pace, though ahead of the likes of Ferrari and Renault.
However, Haug says that he is still not satisfied with the situation, despite saying that the team were making progress with their heavily upgraded W01 car.
"I would hope for more," Haug muttered to Autosport on Monday, "We want to be a winning team, but we need to be patient and we need to keep working hard.
"The car is very reliable, all the ingredients are there, and regularly we do the best pit-stops. We need to just realise that and close the gap to the front."
He added that: "Ferrari is a question mark as we don't know if they could have been faster, and they certainly did not have a very strong weekend, but it is still not good enough.
"Having said that, we were good as a team, we are composed, concentrated, but we need a lot more speed."
He added that despite the Mercedes GP works team being outperformed by their former works partners McLaren in 2010, he still felt "fine" about McLaren's 1-2 finish in Turkey.
"All in all we need to improve our speed and we are working on that, but generally speaking it is fine for us if McLaren wins," Haug insisted, "If we cannot win, it is good. And I think even if the Red Bulls would not have crashed the race was not over."
He added: "It was the 71st victory for us since 1997, which is quite a number, and I think that statistically it is every fourth race that we have won."
After the race itself, Schumacher said that it had been a positive race for the German marque, after outpacing the Ferraris.
"It was a straightforward race for me without any more possibilities," the seven-time champion shrugged.
"All in all, I think we had a positive race and we clearly made a step forward towards Red Bull and in front of Ferrari, so we can be quite happy about that."
Rosberg added that: "I was slightly faster than Michael for much of the race but it was not possible to overtake and I had to be careful as Robert [Kubica] was pushing hard behind me.
"Although our general pace still has to be improved, I'm satisfied that we have taken what we could from this weekend."
| Next > |
|---|
