Mercedes believes it won’t get an accurate gauge on the progress delivered from the team’s recent Formula 1 upgrades until the next round at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The German marque has been striving to recover from an underwhelming start to the season that has comprised zero podium finishes during the opening eight races.
However, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is optimistic that recent developments have reduced the gap to its rivals ahead and placed the team back in a “positive direction”.
George Russell utilised a revised front wing design which had been accelerated to Monaco at the last race to register Mercedes’ second top-five race result this term.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin has warned that it will have to wait until the return to a more conventional circuit to gain an accurate picture.
“There’s a reason teams don’t normally bring update kits to Monaco, which is the very low-speed nature of the circuit,” Shovlin began in a video on Mercedes’ YouTube.
“The fact it’s so busy, the short straights, it’s very hard to actually evaluate anything.
“All the data we have seen, though, says that it was delivering performance, it was bringing a benefit in terms of how the car was feeling.
“George was happy with that and he could feel that it was a step in the right direction. So, we’re definitely happy with what we’ve seen to date.
“But we will learn more in Montreal and then particularly when you get to a track like Barcelona with a wider corner speed range, you can really start to learn about it there.”
Shovlin confirmed that Mercedes will introduce more parts in Canada this weekend, including the tweaked front wing design that Lewis Hamilton elected not to use.
“Well, we’re certainly hoping to build on the momentum that we’ve had recently,” he addressed. “We’ve really been closing down that gap to the front.
“We’ve still got to get in amongst those teams and it’s been frustrating how close, you know, the second race in a row, George has been a thousandth of a second off taking another position in qualifying. He was only a few hundredths of a second off ending up third on the grid.
“But we’re wanting to continue in that direction. We’ve got some smaller updates.
“We’re certainly going to have front wing two on both cars. So that’s something that we’ve been working on and we’ll make sure we can deliver that.”
Shovlin has stated that Mercedes will strive to improve its one-lap pace at the next round in Montreal, despite passing being possible at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
“In terms of the track itself, it’s been completely resurfaced,” the Briton continued. “Probably we’re going to see similar issues with the graining that we had in Monaco.
“The difference in Montreal is you can’t just drive slow. If you drive slow there, you’ll get overtaken.
“Corner speeds like Monaco, there’s a lot of slow speed corners and it was encouraging that we had decent pace through the corners in Monaco.
“But again, the difference in Montreal now is you haven’t got short straights. You’ve got big, long straights.
“You don’t run a maximum downforce wing. You’ll drop a bit of drag to get down those straights a bit quicker.
“But yeah, the main thing is if we’ve got decent pace in the corners, hopefully we can sort of keep building the momentum and try and improve on the recent qualifying race positions.”
