Ralf had said that a senior person at WilliamsF1 was quoted as saying, in the German media, that Ralf's poor performances were a direct result of his crash while testing at Monza last year.

Head responded by saying yes he did make these comments but that they were taken from a private conversation.

Head said: "This came out of a private conversation at an Allianz evening at Barcelona and I was talking to four British journalists and it was well understood that it was an off-the-record conversation. The subject was why Ralf was being out-qualified regularly by his team-mate.

We’ve had drivers before who have had big accidents: Nelson Piquet at Imola when he had a tyre explode and Thierry Boutsen as well, and they both said to me afterwards that when they were concussed it took them six to nine months to fully recover.

In the private conversation, I speculated that maybe the accident at Monza, which was of our making; we had a bond failure in a suspension, that maybe that had had some influence. But it shows that actually, talking off the record is unwise and probably won’t be repeated."

As for his confidence in seeing Ralf improve his on-track performances Head felt that Ralf would sort things out and start to challenge his team-mate.

Head added: "Ralf is an intelligent guy and he knows himself and his body and his physical condition. He is more than capable of looking after that aspect himself. He is not happy with his position relative to his teammate, as you can imagine, and we are confident that we can rely on him to put that aspect right.

"I am not really prepared to expand on the subject any further."