Mercedes-Benz Motorsport vice-president Norbert Haug has insisted that the German manufacturers are still behind McLaren.

They are still fully supportive of McLaren's Formula One efforts despite the fallout from Lewis Hamilton's disqualification from the Australian Grand Prix.

Having been excluded from the constructors' championship in 2007 due to the 'spygate' affair, the British outfit found themselves in even more controversy last week when Hamilton and McLaren sporting director Dave Ryan failed to tell the entire truth during a stewards' hearing after the Melbourne race.

Hamilton was elevated from fourth to third after Jarno Trulli was handed a 25-second penalty for passing the world champion during a safety car period but the case was re-opened by the FIA after evidence was produced of a radio transmission between Hamilton and the pit wall which revealed that he had been told to allow Trulli to pass.

The stewards determined that by not admitting that evidence at the hearing, Hamilton and McLaren had "acted in a manner prejudicial to the conduct of the event by providing evidence deliberately misleading to the stewards."

McLaren sporting director Dave Ryan was subsequently suspended by the team while a shame-faced Hamilton appeared before the media the following day to publicly apologise for 'wasting the stewards' time'.

Haug said that Mercedes-Benz, a 40% shareholder in the team, are concerned with the situation but still fully backing the efforts of the team and principal Martin Whitmarsh.

"I am in permanent contact with Stuttgart and I am reporting to (Mercedes-Benz chairman) Dr Zetsche directly and of course we will sit down next week (at McLaren) to discuss the matter," said Haug, who was at Sepang for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

"I'm not absolutely of the opinion that McLaren is creating one disaster after the other. We have won the world championship and I have full trust in Martin, just to point that out.

"The whole affair is not what we want, absolutely not, but I have the feeling that these guys (Hamilton and Ryan) went and they were probably a little bit afraid of losing fourth place. And then all of a sudden they said no when they should have said yes.

"In hindsight they should have had a print out of the radio conversation, because you can look at it anyway. But if we are honest probably something like that has happened to all of us.

"This is not an excuse, but McLaren are not creating one problem after the other and I think we have a good relationship. I know exactly what money we are spending and I know exactly what positive values we got from last year.

"This is currently not a positive value - the newspapers are full of our stories. It is certainly not creating the right image.

"If it was not a bearable situation, then we need to sit down in Stuttgart and take our decision, but for now I have all the faith and all that I can put behind Martin. He is a great guy and runs the team in a very good way."

Haug admitted though that it would be difficult to state any long-term commitments given the current world economic climate and the difficulties facing car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz.

"For sure, it is a difficult time for all of us in the whole car industry and talking about victories would be better than having a discussion like this," he said.

"If you're asking me if we're going to be here for the next 10 years, I have to be honest and say that I cannot give you an answer because we don't know how the world car industry will develop in these tough economic times.

"I hope things change because the current situation is not easy for anybody but we will discuss all the issues in more detail."

Despite only recently taking over from Ron Dennis as McLaren principal, Whitmarsh himself is uncertain about his future with the team.

"I owe it to the team, not just the people here because there are a thousand people in Bricksworth, Woking and Stuttgart and our other partners who concentrate on this programme, to do what I can to stabilise a very difficult situation," said Whitmarsh.

"In the longer term, I can contemplate my future. It's not self determining. It's for the shareholders of this team to take a view and it's ultimately up to them to decide what's best for this team.

"I'm not resigning this weekend. We've made commitments to look at how we arrived at this situation. We've got to learn from it and we've got to be better in future.

"We've got to do a better job so it's wrong to rule anything out. I've got to look at the best way forward for this team and how we can be better in the future."