Mercedes’ Nick Fry has rebuffed criticism aimed at Michael Schumacher after the Canadian Grand Prix and insists the seven-time champion is still on a par with team-mate Nico Rosberg.

Schumacher qualified 13th and finished 11th in Montreal, after a promising start to the race unravelled with a puncture midway through. Put onto a compromised strategy, he then defended his position very aggressively, attracting flak from a number of experienced on lookers.

The BBC’s Martin Brundle said: “I think Schumacher has driven appallingly today,” adding: “You have to treat the back of Schumacher’s car like the back of a donkey. This is Schumacher’s worst weekend since he came back.” The usually partisan German daily newspaper Bild agreed, describing Canada 2010 as “Schumi’s blackest lap”.

But talking to the Guardian, Fry was quick to jump to the defence of his driver.

“I’m surprised people have reached those conclusions,” he said. “He was in a good position until the puncture, but when something like that happens, you get out of sequence. We also put him on the option tyre slightly earlier than we maybe should have done, otherwise he would have been able to defend better than he did. But certainly from inside the team we see things in a totally different perspective.

“We don’t really see any significant difference in performance between Nico and Michael – one is getting the breaks and the other isn’t at the moment. In sport, what goes around comes around. For those who have a run of luck, that frequently comes to an end, and the opposite happens. So we’re very comfortable with Michael’s performance, and I can’t see any reason why he won’t come good. He continues to improve, and he is going make a good job of it.”

Fry was also optimistic that the team could offer Schumacher a better title capable of getting him to the front of the field. When asked if the title was out of reach for Schumacher, who is 75 points behind leader Lewis Hamilton, Fry said: “Absolutely not.

“It’s all part of the learning process. I think he, and we as a team, will continue to work hard this year and do the best we can. We still want to be in the top three. Red Bull and McLaren are fairly dominant, but Ferrari have had a mixed season. We’ve struggled to make the so-called f-duct rear wing work, and we don’t have the special exhaust system Red Bull have. If we can get both of those things on the car then we’ll be in a lot better position, and in the second half of the season we will continue to work hard and improve.”