Williams to regroup in bid to bounce back

With Mark Webber eliminated in a first corner accident, teammate Nico Rosberg could manage no better than ninth after struggling all race with the pace of his car.

He was pipped to the final point by Vitantonio Liuzzi, whose Scuderia Toro Rosso car uses an older and slower Cosworth V10 engine and had Michelin tyres, which were viewed as less competitive than the Bridgestones this weekend.

Rosberg was also on the kind of one-stop strategy that allowed Jarno Trulli to finish fourth, despite starting from the pitlane.

That performance has left Michael in no doubt that his team now need to sit down and try and focus their efforts on improving their form - especially since they have now dropped behind Red Bull Racing to eighth place in the constructors' championship.

"I think we've got to regroup really," said Michael. "You can't get much lower than that (the Indianapolis performance) and it forces you to be like that."

When asked what the team needed to change, Michael said: "Everything! The personnel we've got, there are no actual issues in terms of how they're working together but we need to focus harder and try and make a step.

"When you have races like this it forces you to re-analyse everything and that's what we'll do. Our focus is to get us back to the front. We need to focus ourselves to make sure that happens. The last two or three races have highlighted that and this has been the worst."

Michael believes that the team's focus has to be on improving the aero-efficiency of their FW28 car.

"I think aero is a very dominant part of the car and there are definitely some improvements we need to make there. But we need to look at the whole lot. If you look for one silver magic bullet it won't come. You've got to have a programme to improve everything."

Michael has refused to accept that the team are suffering from not having the support of a major manufacturer, having split with BMW at the end of last season.

"For sure not having a manufacturer partner hurts you, but there's no way we should be coming round the first lap eighth and then coming in last place on a good strategy to go long.

"There is no way we should be out of the points. You can't blame that on not having a manufacturer. That would be a pretty lame excuse."

And he has denied that Williams' current plight is being hampered by the fact that they do not want to go down the route of exploiting flexible wings - as several other teams are doing.

"I don't think it would be fair to get involved in that," he said. "I don't want to have the approach where, 'we're crap because they're cheating'. We need to have a hard look at ourselves and re-group to return back to the front."

Williams are planning some aerodynamic upgrades to their car for the French Grand Prix, although Michael admits that the demands of the Magny-Cours circuit are not ideal for his car.

"We have a upgrade for there and we're testing at Jerez," he added. "It's a completely different circuit to here, but we have to go away and have a look. Magny-Cours is an efficiency circuit as well, where we are weak at the moment. So we'll concentrate on that.

"In terms of the championship, we'd be 20-30 points up if we'd had the breaks, but that doesn't change the performance of the car. Nico was so far off here. It isn't where we should be.

"We're not strong on many tracks at the moment, but we'll get our act together and come back. It is frustrating, but you've got to fix it and move on."