Schumacher says expectations not met

Although the German squad was bullish about its chances of fighting for victories this year, it is yet to finish on the podium after seven grands prix.

The seven-time champion concedes the season has so far been disappointing for his team.

"Overall, it's clear that the season up to now has gone worse than all of us had hoped," Schumacher told Autosprint magazine.

"In fact, considering the good conclusion to winter testing, it's worse than we had actually expected."

Schumacher also reckons the team's performance has been hurt by having to work on solving too many issues at the same time.

"The fact that on the car we have several areas of work in progress," Schumacher said when asked what had gone wrong. "As long as we worry about solving those, the development of the project suffers at times.

"The positive thing about it is that this time we are able to take all these experiences and this knowledge towards next year. In fact I'm confident that we'll take good steps forward during the rest of this year. We have plenty of work to do, but we are prepared.

"All our attention is focused on building the team. That's what we focus on at the moment, with no exception nor limitation."

Schumacher has scored 26 points in the first seven races of the season, with his fourth place in Canada as his best result yet.