Allison: Monaco slump put Mercedes back on track

Mercedes technical director James Allison has said that the team's poor showing at Monaco actually proved to be a boost to its longer term fortunes.

Monaco was the team's worst race of the 2017 season to date. With Valtteri Bottas finishing in fourth place and Lewis Hamilton in seventh, Mercedes took only 18 points away from the weekend.

Up to then, Mercedes had won three of the five preceding races. While Ferrari won in Australia and Bahrain, Hamilton and Bottas were on the podium alongside him both times.

But when it came to Monaco the bubble burst and the W08's flaws were exposed for all to see. But far from getting despondent, the team got their heads down to analyse what had gone wrong.

"Monaco was a circuit where very few of the good parts of our car were on display - and most of the uglier ones were," Allison told Motorsport.com.

"It was really helpful to us that in regard," he continued. "It focused our minds on where the issues were - it was very, very beneficial."

"Prior to Monaco, we had won a few races. We had been on pole in all but one of them," Allison explained. "We clearly had a quick car and you can flatter yourself that this is all going to be fine.

"It was really helpful for us to see that the problems we had needed to be dealt with, because we didn't like the experience of Monaco."

Allison added that Monaco not only made the process of identifying and analysing the car's problems easier, but also made it possible to quickly arrive at solutions.

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"It was helpful in two ways, as a spur and as a diagnostic," he said. ""From after Monaco we haven't really had a weak race so far."

Despite not taking any upgrades to the next race in Canada, Mercedes were suddenly dominant. Hamilton won in Montreal by almost 20 seconds from Bottas, with Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo another 15 seconds away.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff agreed with Allison's view of the situation. He described the aftermath of the Monaco race as probably the most useful of the year for his team so far this season. He compared it to a similar unexpected slump in Singapore in 2015.

"I am very impressed about how the team coped and handled the situation. But we have it every weekend," said Wolff. "We face difficulties all the time, most of the time not visible to the public."

The team picked up two more wins in Austria and Britain despite juggling gearbox grid penalties for its drivers. However a dominant 1-2 for Ferrari at Hungary before the summer break shows Mercedes still has its work cut out for it in the world championship.

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