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Michael Schumacher has admitted that he has no idea whether Mercedes will be in better shape at Silverstone next weekend as the team still does not fully understand why its car cannot make this year's tyres perform in qualifying.

The seven-time world champion has had two disastrous races in the midfield in the last

two events, with Mercedes showing promise in practice and at times in race trim, but unable to produce any pace in qualifying.

Schumacher said he would love to give the team's British-based personnel a boost with a good showing in their home race, but warned that there was little cause for optimism at present.

"Silverstone represents a special race for us as it is so close to everyone at our factories in Brackley and Brixworth who are all working like hell to make up the quite difficult start into the season that we have experienced," he said.

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"We would like to give them and all of our supporters a good performance this coming weekend, even if we seem to struggle a bit at the moment.

"We have to face the fact that we were less competitive in Valencia than we had hoped for which makes it difficult to predict how we can perform at the British Grand Prix.

"Our race pace has been quite promising but our qualifying speed is not yet ideal and we still do not understand the full picture about the tyres.

"This clearly is something that we will keep working on intensively."

Prior to the time-related slump in Canada and Valencia, Schumacher had all but silenced critics of his comeback by turning the tables on team-mate Nico Rosberg in the in-house battle and starting to score consistently.

But he has fallen back behind the younger German again as Mercedes slumped in the last two grands prix.

In Valencia both Schumacher and Rosberg insisted that the Mercedes was quick enough to win races this year if the team could make it work in better harmony with the tyres.ITV-F1