Schuey: Smaller teams must improve

Speaking in response to suggestions that redundancies at both Jordan and British American Racing prove that the situation is serious, Schumacher said: "If you are talking about those two examples I think it is only right to consider one. British American Racing, as far as I'm aware, has restructured and in some cases people who have gone have been replaced.

"Jordan has had to let people go for whatever reason and I don't want to get into that, but you have good times and less good times, which is normal. Maybe we are getting to a time when it is tougher because the world economy is tougher, but usually F1 is the first to get out of it as well because companies want to invest and they get involved.

"If you do a good job, and Eddie has shown that he can, then you are interesting to sponsors. At the moment he is at the other side, which makes him less interesting to sponsors. But what are we (the bigger teams) supposed to do? Give him money to keep running? It's not really feasible. Formula 1 has always been a certain way and I don't think you can keep making changes to it one day to another."