Schumi: More I pushed, worse it got

Editor 07 May 2011 2:36 PM

Despite finally making it into the top-ten shoot-out in Turkey, Michael Schumacher was not happy with his P8 on the Istanbul grid…

Despite finally making it into the top-ten shoot-out in Turkey, Michael Schumacher was not happy with his P8 on the Istanbul grid.

Schumacher has struggled this season in qualifying, failing to get the best out of his Mercedes W02.

However, the team turned a corner in China and followed that up with a strong showing in this weekend’s Turkish practice session.

Schumacher, in fact, finished Saturday’s final session with the second fastest time, just 0.001s behind Sebastian Vettel.

But the German failed to turn that pace into a solid grid slot despite making it into the top-ten shoot-out for the first time this season.

“I’m not happy at all, being so far off, that’s a bit unusual,” he told the BBC. “It didn’t really work out at all. The grip for whatever reason wasn’t there compared to what I had this morning.

“I struggled already in Q2. The track certainly was better than it was this morning, but we couldn’t reproduce what we did this morning. So, we need to understand what’s going on.

“The more I pushed, the more things went wrong, and in the end there was no grip left.”