Ross Brawn says Mercedes still have a lot of work to do

Mercedes F1 team boss Ross Brawn says that the team’s growing pains are now behind their race performances are not yet where they need to be, stressing that they are “not there yet” despite the improvement in performance.

After what was frankly a terrible end to the 2012 season, the team has made huge strides forward and has been among the pace setters in the early part of the 2013 season with two poles and two podiums so far this year.

The evidence is there that Mercedes may even have the fastest car on the grid over a single qualifying lap but their drivers slipping down the race order over the duration of the race, points to more work that needs to be done as far as race performance is concerned.

“It’s not down to one lap,” Brawn told Sky Sports. “What we have to have is a car that is fastest over 50-odd laps, and that’s the challenge.”

“It’s nice to have taken pole position at the last two races, but what really counts is the race itself, and I don’t believe we’re there yet.”

Brawn went on to say that their drivers have “taken the equipment and done what they have on the last two Saturdays, but I don’t think we have the equipment yet to be the strongest in the race. That’s what we are working on.”

Brawn admitted however that their current improving results are on the back of the extensive restructuring that has taken place at Brackley over the past year.

“From an engineering perspective, we know what we did twelve months ago is now coming through and giving us a reward,” he said. “Changes were made back then which were painful at the time, and were part of the reason why we had a poor second half to last season. You have the pain for a while of those changes, which is what we had last year.”

Brawn went on to say, “We’ve now a very motivated group of people, and we’re starting to put the things in place they need. When you do that the end result is you make progress. On the sporting side, we’ve two great drivers, and people I’ve worked with for a long time in the team. I know how they work, they know how I work.

“You can always look to add to it and tune it to improve, but you mustn’t damage what you already have.”