Michael Schumacher believes Mercedes’ second place in the constructors’ championship shows they can compete for the title next year.

The seven-times champion, who left the team at the end of last year, said the team had made huge progress since his last drive for them.

“It’s a great result,” said Schumacher, “particularly if you consider where we’re coming from last year, I mean we’ve been absolutely nowhere by the end of the year and no one could have been expected to be fighting even at part of the season for the championship. ”

“They had a great start of the year and they even were able to push through the year quite hard until a point that the understood ‘OK, here we are at the end of the championship for us, so it’s better to focus on 2014’.

“And so we did in the past, the infrastructure now is in place since quite a while. Ross Brawn decided to have the right amount of people in the right position and everything now is there to have the base to fight the championship in the future and that’s what I think can happen. Anyway, congratulations for the second position.”

Schumacher was rumoured to have been approached by Lotus to make a two-race return to F1 in place of Kimi Raikkonen at the end of the year. But he said he is not interested in making a second comeback to the sport.

“Formula One is certainly the highlight of motorsport and it’s great to drive the car, absolutely, yes,” he said. “I enjoyed when I’ve been in the Nurburgring, to drive the car.”

“Just a bit of fun but to do it seriously, no. I’m tired of this one and that’s why I decided because Mercedes gave me the option to continue for the future and I didn’t really fancy it.

“I have arrived in my new life and it’s very nice. Even if you go back, the first time I retired I didn’t really miss it because I have so many other pleasureful things to do, it’s a good life.”

2013 F1 season