Toto Wolff has said that Mercedes need to be careful not to draw too many conclusions about their upgrades this weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Many are intrigued to see what the tweaks Mercedes have made to their W14 are going to do in terms of their performance, with drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell naturally hoping it will allow them to close the gap to Red Bull.
Indeed, so far this season, as with much of 2022, Merc have not been able to compete with the team from Milton Keynes and, at the start of this year after being off of the leading pace in Bahrain, the team decided it was time to go down a different design route.
That work will begin to be seen in earnest this weekend with changes to the car, with the intended debut for the tweaks in Imola of course taken off of the slate due to the heavy floods in Emilia Romagna.
Speaking ahead of this weekend in Monaco, though, Wolff warned that it is important the team does not read too much into performance this weekend, given the nature of the street circuit in Monte-Carlo – though they will still endeavour to learn as much as they can:
“The revised calendar means that Monaco is now the starting point of the European leg of the season.
“It is a unique event but will still provide an opportunity to learn about the upgrades to W14 – but we also need to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from this one event. We are introducing the first step in a new development direction.
“It won’t be a silver bullet – from my experience, they do not exist in our sport. We hope that it gives the drivers a more stable and predictable platform. Then we can build on that in the weeks and months ahead.
“F1 is tough competition and a meritocracy. We are not where we want to be but there’s no sense of entitlement. It’s just about hard work to get us to the front.”
With the European season now upon us, Mercedes have a perfect chance to really start honing their car in terms of the new development direction, with them aiming to obviously get back to winning races and challenging for championships.
How much they learn from Monaco remains to be seen, but nevertheless they’ll be happy they have some upgrades to try and get them heading in the right direction.
