Christian Horner poked fun at Mercedes after the German team’s bad start to the 2011 season.<\/p>\n
As the paddock took shape last week in Melbourne, Michael Schumacher predicted the W02 car might be Red Bull’s closest challenger this year.<\/p>\n
But the Brackley-built car was in fact two seconds off the pace in qualifying before the seven time world champion retired “for safety reasons” with a damaged floor.<\/p>\n
“The team said ‘stop, it makes no sense, it’s too dangerous’,” Schumacher told Bild newspaper.<\/p>\n
Teammate Nico Rosberg also stopped after being struck by Rubens Barrichello’s Williams.<\/p>\n
“Mercedes was lucky to have failed cars, so that nobody could see how slow they were,” Red Bull team boss Horner joked to the German newspaper.<\/p>\n
Schumacher admitted that Mercedes lacked speed in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“I can’t tell you how good we would have been in the race because my car was damaged in the third corner.\u00a0 But it definitely would not have been easy.<\/p>\n
“After the encouraging winter tests we came here with very different expectations,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mercedes also had problems with its KERS units in Australia, but competition director Norbert Haug urged calm.<\/p>\n
“To panic or to rush would be the ideal recipe for failure,” Welt newspaper quotes him as saying.<\/p>\n
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