Andrew Shovlin is expecting the Canadian Grand Prix to pose more of a challenge for Mercedes in comparison to its performance at the last race in Barcelona.
The much-vaunted upgrades on the W14 first seen in Monaco delivered welcome improvement for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell for Sunday’s race at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Mercedes scored its first double podium of the season as Hamilton and Russell finished second and third, with the latter rising from 12th on the grid to claim his first top-three finish since winning the penultimate event of last year in São Paulo.
Although the updates of a new front suspension, floor, and sidepods vaulted Mercedes into the position of ‘best of the rest’ behind Red Bull, and second in the constructors’ championship, trackside engineering director Shovlin has warned against a repeat for the next race in Canada on June 16-18.
Shovlin said: “The fact is that update kit works very well around circuits like Barcelona with a lot of high-speed performance.
“The car itself probably would have been okay there because we’ve been better at the fast circuits, the front-limited tracks, but we ended up with a really good balance, really good race pace.
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“Now, where we’re going to go next week, Montréal, is a very different circuit – low-speed corners, quite a lot of straight-line full throttle, and we would expect more of a challenge there.
“So we’re not thinking that we’ll be going in nipping at the heels of Red Bull, we’re going in there prepared for a battle with Ferrari, Aston Martin, maybe even Alpine.”
Shovlin concedes the result in Barcelona was at least a shot in the arm for the team and validation that its upgrade package is working, providing a platform on which it can now develop a car that will hopefully challenge Red Bull at some stage.
“It was certainly really good fun to be part of that race, to be able to get the double podium as well,” said Shovlin.
“We’ve had a few tough races recently, and while we’ve brought home a decent amount of points, it’s so nice to get both of the drivers back on the podium after a bit of a break.
“As for Montréal, again we’re thinking it will be more along the lines of some of the earlier races where we’re definitely in the bunch with Ferrari, with Aston, and now Alpine looks to have joined that group.
“But it’s great racing there, it’ll be good fun, and we’re certainly going to be fighting to find every little bit of performance we can, because the way the grid stacks up now you can be P2, you can be P10, and there’s only a few tenths in it.
“We’re looking forward to more exciting racing but certainly we’re aware that Canada is likely to be a bigger challenge than the Sunday we just had in Barcelona.”
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