Mercedes Will Not Blame Poor Season on Tires

Mercedes GP did not impress a whole lot of people when they put their W02 challenger through its paces during the latest group test in Valencia. In fact, some might say the Brackley based team has quite some work to do in the upcoming few weeks, coming up with solutions to make the car a title contender in 2011.

That being said, Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug wants no more excuses in 2011. Not event the new tires provided by Pirelli, which many have criticized in recent days.

According to Haug, blaming a potential struggling season on the tires and the way the car adjusts to it is not an option. And maybe it's just us, but that seems like an ultimatum given to team boss Ross Brawn and his F1 organization, as Mercedes is getting tired to watch the title fight as an outsider.

“The tires are the same for everybody and at the end of the day you need to live with it,” said Haug, when interviewed on this topic by British magazine Autosport. “You cannot blame the tires. We know about our shortcomings from 2010 and we want to do a better job.”

“You can blame your car, you can blame your set-up, you can blame everything that is built around the tires. But you cannot blame the tires,” added the German official.

Last year, when Schumacher had an unsuccessful F1 return campaign, the main aspects of his car to which he pointed out for this situation were the strange behavior of the Bridgestone slick tires and the understeering nature of his W01 car. Over the winter, he hinted that an improvement in terms of performance for 2011 will be strongly linked with how the new Pirelli tires will behave this year.