Michael Schumacher confident of Mercedes progress at Mugello

Michael Schumacher believes that Mercedes has made solid progress during the Mugello test.

Schumacher had terrible weather conditions on Tuesday and was only able to complete five laps on Tuesday afternoon but he made up for all the lost time on Wednesday as he went on to complete 144 laps.

The laps gave a good run to the new Mercedes updates and a lot of data for the engineers to look into and analyse.

“Unlike yesterday, we were able to gather really a lot of data, and like this we are learning more and more about our car which is absolutely positive,” he said. “Of course we also tested some new things, which I would not want to go into detail about, so it is definitely worth coming here at this stage of the season.

“I am really happy with how things are proceeding with our car and our team, and I am convinced we have a good basis for the final day of the test tomorrow,” he said.

Schumacher has had a mixed 2012 season so far, he has not been able to finish races for one reason or another and in the last race had to go through technical difficulty which caused him to be out of Q2. Then a necessary gearbox caused another five grid penalty. The veteran German still managed to finish 10 after starting the race placed at 22nd.

After the race Schumacher blamed the Pirelli compounds as one of the reasons behind his poor showing and said that the quick degradation of the tyres is causing him trouble. Pirelli’s director of motorsport Paul Hembery came out in defense of the tyres and said that Schumacher had no trouble with the tyres during the pre-season tests. He also added that Pirelli can come up with tyres that will have zero degradation but it will make the sport really dull.

It has been one of the positive signs in the sport since Pirelli took over as the compound provider of the sport, that the races have become much more tactical. Schumacher said after the laps on Wednesday that he has not had a lot of trouble with the tyres at Mugello.

It will be interesting to see how he fares as the season progresses towards the European leg with the Spanish Grand Prix lined up first.

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Posted by Kashif Khan on May 5 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.