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Michael Schumacher has been urged to keep 'plugging away' with his Formula 1 comeback, despite having not yet delivered the results that he or his team were hoping for this season.

That is the view of Mercedes GP CEO Nick Fry, who reckons that Schumacher is continuing to improve on his readjustment to F1 - and says the outfit is not losing faith in the German even though he has yet to finish on the podium.

"I think Michael has just to plug away at it," Fry told AUTOSPORT. "It is not coming together clearly. We have fits and starts and last weekend had some good points - like the second part of qualifying - but then the final part of qualifying was a bit disappointing.

"During the race there were points where we thought we could put in a better result here, but it didn't quite work out at the end.

"Clearly everyone expects the best of Michael Schumacher because he is seven-time world champion, but on the other hand you've got to say he is still a top ten driver which, on a global scale, is pretty impressive.

"He is still learning and we have still got confidence in him and he has confidence in himself. So I am quite optimistic."

Schumacher himself reckons there was reason to feel more bullish about his chances for the rest of the season after his Mercedes GP team made a step forward in performance at Silverstone last weekend.

"Certainly the car was working more true to its normal car/tyre combination, because I think that a lot of the problems in some of the events are down to some tyre issues that we haven't understood," said Schumacher.

"Clearly in Valencia we made mistakes with the car that we didn't do at Silverstone, and therefore we performed on normal levels."AUTOSPORT-F1