After the obvious step forward at the Spanish Grand Prix, Mercedes failed to match or come close to the pace of the leaders at the Monaco Grand Prix weekend, where they had to settle for battling it out with the McLaren of Lando Norris and the Alpines. by Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.
Although George Russell finally managed to finish in fifth position, being ‘first of the rest’, Lewis Hamilton could not get past eighth position, behind Norris and Alonso .
Referring to the performance of the Silver Arrows throughout the weekend on the streets of Monte Carlo, Andrew Shovlin , Director of Track Engineering for Mercedes , had this to say: “It’s been a frustrating weekend for the team and the drivers. “.
“We were way behind in qualifying pace and even in the race we weren’t quick enough either.”
” George did a very good job of taking fifth place from Lando in the dry and keeping him behind until the end of the race.”
“Lewis had a hard time battling with the Alpine drivers for most of the race. We couldn’t find a way to clear the way for him without overtaking on track, which was obviously impossible to do here,” he added.
“Also, the conditions on Sunday, which were colder, made the situation very difficult for the tyres, so the pace of our cars dropped in the race.
“This track has shown us our weaknesses again. We still have a lot of work to do before we get to Baku, as there are a lot of similarities between the corners at these two circuits.”
Mercedes director Toto Wolff also said that they drew positive conclusions from the weekend at the 2022 Monaco Grand Prix.
“It was a good race by George, but really frustrating for Lewis. He was a few laps behind Esteban [Ocon], who was then penalized for crashing him, and later fell behind the slow pace of Fernando [Alonso].”
“Lewis could have competed with Lando and George if it wasn’t for all of that.”
” Monaco reminded us once again that everything depends on track position and we are the third fastest team.”
“We have learned some important lessons about our car this weekend. The insights will help us in our work to stay ahead of the rest of the grid.”
