By sessions
May 29 2011

It was difficult to watch both Mercedes GP team cars move backwards after good qualification results in Monaco. It’s time to go back to the drawing board and work out the cars shortcomings.

Prior to the Monaco GP Norbert Haug simply said, “Mercedes GP needs to bring bigger improvements to its car if it is going to launch a serious challenge against the front runners.”

He goes on to mention although MGP has struggled to consistently get the best out of its package it must not ignore the fact that it needs to deliver a faster car.

Haug also feels the positions gained in Spain were good, but he continues,” the team’s first job should be to check whether they extracted all that was possible in Spain; I think there was more in the car.”

He told Autosport, We need the upgraded technical package we are working on and we hope to achieve it in the very near future.

It’s obvious the package wasn’t available in time for Monaco, and with only a short two weeks until the team flies off to the Canadian GP in Montreal time will be of the highest essence.

Montreal is a very demanding track on brakes and tyre degradation because of its abrasive surface, long straights and short breaking zones.

Another monkey wrench is the ever present uncanny chance of rain the often plaques the June dates surrounding the Grand Prix weekend.

MGP was somewhat lucky despite the poor outing in Monaco in that Renault also ran into some misfortune with Petrov crashing and Heidfeld only able to gain 4 points.

Sadly we seem to be struggling and the lottery results of Monaco dealt us unlucky numbers.

Getting back to the more regular circuit of Gilles Villeneuve may provide Mercedes GP the opportunity to climb back into the points.

All we can do is hope upgrades will be ready to be installed and they do indeed increase our pace.