Concerns for Mercedes who ‘would have done this differently’ even with new W14

Despite lauding Mercedes’ efforts with the revised W14, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin admits even in Monaco they noted things they would’ve done “differently if we were doing it again”.

Having conceded earlier this season they probably wouldn’t win a grand prix with the W14 in its existing specification, Mercedes introduced a heavily revised version of the car at the Monaco Grand Prix.

P6 and P12 in Friday’s practices, but with both drivers less than eight-tenths down on pace-setter Max Verstappen, the team was generally happy with day one with Lewis Hamilton calling it an “amazing day” while George Russell said there were “definitely some positive signs”.

There were, however, also notable areas where Mercedes could’ve done something different, something Shovlin accepts may have been better.

“We’re very much in the situation of looking at the car we’ve brought here and thinking ‘oh we’d have done that differently if we were doing it again, we would have done this differently’,” he told Sky Sports F1.

“If you start with a clean sheet, it’s a lot easier to optimise than if you’re halfway through development and suddenly you make a pretty big change.

“So the positive of that is that we’ve got a big long list of things we’d like to do, which we know we’ll bring forward.

“But it’s a really impressive job to get all this to what has now become race six. That was a really good job from everyone in the factory.”

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He, however, accepts no car is ever designed to suit the Monte Carlo street circuit given its very different characteristics to any other circuit.

“The fact is you don’t go and design the car for Monaco,” said Shovlin. “You design for it your Silverstones and Barcelonas.

“So, the challenge is always how do you take that car design to another circuit and get it to work on this slow, bumpy, very tight twisty track.

“That’s what we’re going to be looking at. It’s just a compromise. Bumps are bad so it’s very difficult for ride, it makes you want to go soft.

“The nature of regulations is that these cars do work better somewhere close to the ground.

“What we really need to explore now is all those compromises, try and find the right place.”

Russell, almost eight-tenths down on Verstappen, added: “Monaco is such a unique track so it’s not an ideal place to be evaluating updates, but we knew that coming into the weekend.

“We’re just trying to focus on improving around this circuit and qualifying is obviously the most important part of the weekend. We generally do better on Sundays and struggle more on Saturday, so we need to try and flip that here.

“There were positive signs to take from the sessions but it’s never easy around this place. We made a lot of changes throughout the day, and the car felt improved in FP2.

“We’ll work hard tonight to see what we can do.”