Mercedes GP suffered the same emotions as the F1 owners this weekend. After all the build-up, the Bahrain GP was a big let-down.

Michael Schumacher was back, Nico Rosberg would push him all the way, and they had a car to compete at the front. That’s what we thought.

Well, they performed the poorest out of the four top teams. 5th and 6th may make it seem like they were competitive, but they were well beaten by both Ferrari’s, massively out-paced from one Red Bull and didn’t have the speed to catch Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren.

They are ahead of the Red Bull’s in the Constructors’ Championship, but Ross Brawn will know they were fortunate to stay ahead of Mark Webber during the pit-stops, and Sebastian Vettel beat both his cars with a cracked exhaust pipe.

Had this been last season and refuelling was part of the race, chances are Mercedes would have been a distant 7th and 8th. Instead, Schumacher was able to resist a late challenge from Jenson Button and Webber with overtaking nigh on impossible for the drivers.

Neither Mercedes driver managed to break the two minute barrier during the race, a feat that was even managed by Jaime Alguersuari. Something needs to be done about the team’s pace.

The biggest story to come out of Mercedes was the fact Rosberg beat Schumacher in both qualifying and the race. The seven-time World Champion was extremely quiet, though he said he enjoyed his return to racing, even though the rule on no refuelling was not to his liking.

If he’s going to challenge for the title this season, there will need to be a big improvement from both driver and car.

There were some positives for the Brackley-based team. There were no reliability issues like the ones that troubled Red Bull and the drivers were consistent throughout, meaning the tyres didn’t fall away.

And Rosberg was solid, if unspectacular, in his first outing for the ‘Silver Arrows’ team, which will please Brawn. He now knows he has two drivers who will push each other on all season, like his two drivers did last season.

Mercedes knew they wouldn’t realistically be winning this weekend’s race, but they won’t have enjoyed being fourth best. The likelihood is they will have to wait quite a while, possibly until the European season starts, before they are able to get close to Ferrari.

Unless the Maranello-based team suffer their own problems before then, the gap could already be too big for Schumacher or Rosberg to launch a competitive title challenge.

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