Monaco highlighted Mercedes’ weaknesses again says Andrew Shovlin

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said the Monaco circuit “highlighted our weaknesses” after a P5 and P8 finish.

The reigning Constructors’ Champions looked to have turned their season around in Barcelona when upgrades to their car finally reduced the porpoising effect that had hampered their campaign up to that point.

So much so was the improvement that many pundits as well as those within the paddock were tipping Mercedes to be back in title race and make it a three-way fight between themselves, Red Bull and Ferrari. Yet in Monaco, their fortunes were drastically different to their would-be title opponents.

Red Bull earned a 1-3 finish while Ferrari finished P2 and P4 yet both had a clear pace advantage over Mercedes.

George Russell finished 11.968 seconds off race winner Sergio Perez while Hamilton was 50.388 behind the Mexican.

Shovlin described it as “a frustrating weekend” for the team third in the Constructors’ Championship.

“It’s been a frustrating weekend for the team and drivers,” he wrote in Mercedes post-race debrief. “We weren’t anywhere near quick enough on one lap but even in the race we didn’t have enough pace.

“George did a good job to take P5 from Lando on the dry transition and also to hold him behind at the end of the race; luckily, he was only there for one lap. Lewis had a tough time sandwiched between the Alpines for most of the race – we just couldn’t find a way of putting him in free air without him needing to overtake which is near impossible.

Shovlin highlighted the difficulty in getting heat into the tyres given the weather conditions and also said the Monaco circuit had highlighted the W13’s weaknesses.

“It also seemed that the cold conditions were making life quite difficult for the tyres and both our cars dropped off towards the end of the race. We’ve clearly got work to do ahead of Baku as there are a lot of similarities between the cornering sections and this track…