Schumacher: Gap too big to be happy

Although Schumacher finished in fourth position, the Mercedes driver admitted the pace of his car was nothing to be too pleased about after finishing over a minute behind race winner Mark Webber.

He conceded, however, that it had been an entertaining race after having to keep Jenson Button at bay for several laps.

"It was quite an entertaining race right from the start even if we knew from the beginning that there would not be a chance for us to compete for a podium place if everything goes as normal," said Schumacher.

"Still it was exciting for me to manage to keep the position that I gained but then, I am obviously not too happy as today we could only defend.

"All we could do was to hope for reliability problems of others in order to make up positions and that's not really what you want to do.

"It was an interesting fight with Jenson but all I could do is try to not give him a possibility to overtake.

"In the end the gap to the front is just too big to be really happy after this race. For Monaco, we hope that the characteristics of the track will suit our car better."

Team-mate Nico Rosberg completed a miserable weekend after finishing down in 13th position following a troubled race.

The German insisted the upgraded car had not worked well for him.

"The race didn't go my way today and, of course, it is frustrating to have finished outside of the points for the first time this season," Rosberg said. "We have a good upgrade on the car here which should be improving our performance but it just hasn't worked out for me here.

"In qualifying, I did the best that I could but starting from eighth position isn't where we wanted to be this weekend. In the race, I had the situation with Robert at the start when I tried for the gap but he didn't see me so I was pushed wide and then we had a problem at my first stop which dropped me back again.

"So it's been a disappointing weekend and we need to look into the reason why we have been off our usual pace."