Mercedes technical director James Allison has confirmed that they will bring “many more” upgrades to the W14 for the rest of the season, starting with the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished fourth and fifth respectively in a rain-impacted Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday. All eyes were on the Silver Arrows heading into the race due to the substantial upgrade package being introduced.
Allison has since confirmed that despite wishing they did not have to introduce the upgrades for the first time on a track like Monaco, both Hamilton and Russell seemed content with the performance of the car.
“Monaco is definitely not the place you would like to bring a major upgrade to the track,” he told the team’s YouTube channel.
“You would like to make your debut at a more normal track and that’s what we planned. They [the upgrades] had been planned for Imola, but sadly with the cancellation of Imola, they arrived instead for their debut in Monaco – not an easy thing.
“I would say it’s too early to say what their impact will be on the rest of the season because Monaco is such a terribly difficult place to make these sorts of judgements at.
“We didn’t set the world on fire in qualifying, but the car had reasonably tidy race pace. We’ll wait and find out at the next race to see where we truly stand in a more normal track.
“But the drivers seemed to give reasonable feedback about the car, that it felt good under braking, the car felt OK.
Hamilton and Russell finished fourth and fifth respectively at the Monaco Grand Prix
“And the data we took off the car on the aerodynamic sensors were not giving us any alarm bells. They were sort of suggesting that things were in line with expectation.”
Allison was also asked whether Mercedes will wait to understand how the new Monaco upgrades impacted the car before deciding to press ahead with further changes.
And although in an ideal world the team would like to fully process all the information before making their next step, the team’s technical director admitted that timing pressures will see them press on with further upgrades regardless.
'The upgrades will keep coming'
“We certainly will settle back and look at what the Monaco upgrade package has bought as at a more normal track,” Allison added. “But we will also push on in parallel with a whole bunch more things.
“So there will be a little bit we’re bringing to Barcelona and many more things in the races that follow.
“We can’t afford just to do everything sequentially, although there’s a sort of academic purity to that, it’s just too slow a way of going ahead.
“So the upgrades will keep coming. Hopefully a decent package to build upon with what we put on the track in Monaco and then we just step forward from here up to the summer break and beyond.”
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