Timo Glock fears his Marrussia Virgin Racing team will struggle even to qualify for races this season if it does not figure out ways to get its latest upgrades working more effectively.
The team introduced several new components in the Turkish Grand Prix in the hope of turning its season around following a disappointing start to the campaign. Glock, however, endured a difficult grand prix and admitted he had not been happy during the whole weekend. He was also forced to remove some of the updates because of problems with them.
The German driver reckons it is vital for Virgin to get the updates working if it is to avoid trouble qualifying for the races.
"If we carry on like this, it will be quite difficult to qualify for the races," said Glock. "If we cannot make updates work then we will be quite in trouble. But it is too early to say – I am behind the team, there are a lot of good people here and we just have to sort out some stuff for the future and change certain things."
He added: "We went to the full package on my car and it was not slow or anything it was just quite difficult to drive. In terms of driveability from the exhaust system which was difficult to get under control and everyone else in the paddock has the same problem. When you run it the first time it takes some time and it didn't work perfect for us, so we made a decision to go back and I had to go to the old floor and old exhaust system."
Virgin is preparing to overhaul its technical department, in a move that could lead to a change of technical director Nick Wirth's responsibilities. Glock agreed that structural changes were necessary.
"We have to make changes for the future," he said. "Everyone knows where we are and the situation we are in, and we have a team where we, together, have to make changes for the future. We have to find a direction and find a way to make updates work – that is all I can say."
Glock said there was no point in feeling frustrated about the team having failed to take a step forward this year, as he reckons it has to focus on finding solutions on how to improve.
"'Frustrating' is maybe the wrong word," he said. "Everyone expected that we would make a step forward and we couldn't do it. In general, it doesn't make any sense for the team to be frustrated. We have to get on top of the problems and we have to make changes for the future to make it better."