Michael Schumacher has urged everyone within the Mercedes team to remain calm if they are to resolve the issues currently hampering their progress in the world championship ahead of this Sunday's Hungarian grand prix.
On home soil at Hockenheim, the German grand prix weekend was one of the team's worst this year as they collected their second lowest total of points – just six – from the 11 races to date.
Not for the first time this season, Schumacher and his team-mate Nico Rosberg were unable to translate reasonable pace in practice into a strong qualifying performance and solid race day. Schumacher has now failed to qualify in the top 10 in three of the last four grands prix, from which he has collected only four points. Rosberg, finished only eighth after starting ninth on the grid and has slipped 63 points behind the championship leader Lewis Hamilton.
With no end in sight to Mercedes's troubles, the seven-times champion Schumacher said: "The German grand prix was clearly disappointing for us. But we have seen a variety of performances from our team over the past few races, and with this in mind I will still go to Hungary with a positive feeling.
"It is clear we need to understand our car better and the track in Budapest, plus more time to evaluate our upgrades, should help us in that respect. As I said after the last race, we have to remain calm, look into all the details and analyse our performance in order to learn as much as possible from such weekends. That is the way we have to go in order to improve our situation, which may already be possible this weekend in Hungary."
The team principal Ross Brawn was just as disappointed as Schumacher at the team's lack of performance at Hockenheim, in particular after Rosberg scored a fine third at Silverstone a fortnight previously. Brawn admits the team have still yet to discover the optimum set-up and, combined with a lack of pace in comparison to Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren, these are tough times for the German manufacturer.
"The last race was challenging for us, particularly following the podium finish at Silverstone, and we were disappointed not to be competing further up the field," said Brawn. "The team is doing a good job operationally, but we need to find more pace from the car and we continue to work very hard to achieve this."
Assessing this weekend's Hungarian grand prix, Brawn added: "The Hungaroring is a technically demanding circuit. It should be a good proving ground for our latest upgrades, providing further invaluable track testing time as we work to find the optimum set-up."