Gutierrez hit out at his outfit after yet more mechanical trouble in Friday free practice at Barcelona, claiming that the issues were making him look 'very bad'.

Steiner has confessed that his team is not doing a good enough job for the young Mexican, and has promised that he will ensure everyone works even harder to sort things out.

“We need to get these little gremlins out, because when Esteban is out there, he shows that he has got the pace,” explained Steiner.

“But he can never put it down in something significant which stays there for everybody to see, because everyone says 'yeah, if and when'. But nobody has ever won a race with that.

“The time will come. It’s frustrating but this is growing pain and we need to get better in doing it.”

Deep analysis

Steiner said he had looked in to whether there was an explanation for why most of the team's problems had been on one side of the garage – and nothing had jumped out at him.

“I think hard about that,” he said. “The only thing it could be is people, because the car is the same. But it isn’t one thing, it’s always something different. There’s always something that doesn’t work.

“It’s so random that you cannot say ‘oh there is a line to this and I can follow this and then I get to this'. No. So we just work to sort it out. That’s the only aim now.”

When asked what the team could do, Steiner said: “Work more and better, that’s the only way. You need to keep your head down and keep on working.

“If we can do it on one car, we can do it on the other. There is no magic to it, it’s just hard work. It’s not like if we do this it will be all solved, because it is so random. We need to get to grips with that.”

Outburst expected

Despite Gutierrez's angry comments after Friday, Steiner said he was not unduly concerned about the emotions being shown.

“It is normal drivers complain,” he said. "If they are complaining we can make things better. If they say it’s fine, we cannot.

“You never want a driver who is happy with what he has got. How bad it is, he has to judge.

“Romain is pretty good at that, he’s being doing it long enough. But if you have a guy that tells you what you want to hear, you know where you end up? Last. That is the thing.

“You need to have someone who pushes and says this is not what the car should be doing and because of this complaining or whatever people communicate differently. With their complaining, the guys get motivated to sort it because they don’t like to be complained at.”

He added: “I have to manage the situation and keep him upbeat and tell him ‘hey you are ok, when you are driving you are ok, we didn’t lose faith in you, we just need to fix so you can drive - there is not a problem with you so don’t worry.’ It’s part of my job to manage that.”