One Year ago, Brawn GP arrived at Monza with people questioning their title credentials. They duly delivered a dominating one-two finish as their nearest rivals, Red Bull, choked.

Can the team, now under the guise of Mercedes GP, repeat the feat with a scintillating display from each of their talented drivers and stuff all the criticism back into the faces of their naysayers?

Er, no.

Last year Brawn still had one of the top three cars on the grid. Mercedes have, at the very best, the sixth-fastest car.

Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari will be joined by Renault and Force India at the front of the grid, leaving the Silver Arrows scrapping with Williams, Toro Rosso and Sauber outside the top ten.

The best hope for picking up any points at all is for Sebastian Vettel to carry on knocking off his title rivals up ahead.

Mercedes just do not suit these high-speed tracks. Even with the superior Mercedes-Benz engine that powers McLaren and Force India’s phenomenal top speeds, they are struggling.

They have announced they will modify the blown diffuser, which is still overheating so isn’t giving the performance they believed it would, as they try to find straight-line speed. It will couple with the low downforce setup that is needed for the Italian GP.

But don’t worry, these modifications aren’t stopping the team from performing their main goal; designing a world championship-contending car for next year.

If anybody deserves a car capable of winning races it is Nico Rosberg who has quietly gone about his business all season, consistently finishing the car as high as it possibly can. Last weekend he put an emphatic exclamation mark on his dominance over his team-mate with a late overtake to finish ahead of Michael Schumacher once again.

Both drivers out-performed their equipment by picking up points at Spa, but the team aren’t expecting to match that at Monza.

Schumacher said: “I expect it to be a real challenge for our team. We have seen already several times this year that circuits with characteristics like those of Monza do not really play in our hands. Of course, we will go there prepared to try hard to achieve the maximum we can from our package and we will see to what extent we can achieve that and fight our way through.”

Monza, of course, used to be a home grand prix for Schumacher and Ross Brawn, but the glory days won’t be revisited this weekend.

Getting one of the drivers in the points will classify as a successful end to a very difficult European season that has yielded just the one podium.

They definitely won’t be adding to it this weekend.

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