Mercedes is among F1's midfield contenders based on its one-lap pace, says the team's trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.
Both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton failed to make the final stage of qualifying on Friday afternoon at Imola, a first for the Mercedes squad since Japan 2012.
Hamilton was even at risk of being knocked out of the session as early as Q1, the seven-time world champion securing his spot in Q2 by just four-thousandths of a second.
Ultimately, Russell and Hamilton qualified P11 and P13 on Friday, with both drivers struggling once again with Mercedes' ever-present porpoising issues, but also with tyre temperatures, a factor that weighed heavily on the single-lap pace of the Brackley squad's W13 Silver Arrow.
"We’ve struggled with tyre warm up with this car to be honest, we’ve not got to the bottom of it," said Shovlin.
"Today was a painful example of that, where we couldn’t get the runs in that were long enough to build temperature to get the cars into the right window.
"We’ve seen it at all the races – at Bahrain it doesn’t really cost you. At all the other tracks it’s actually been a difficulty in qualifying."
©Mercedes
The problem was obviously exacerbated by Imola's particularly cool environment on Friday, with track temps never exceeding 13.8°C.
"Our race pace has normally been good, we’ve demonstrated that we’re third quickest on race pace.
"The problem is on a single lap, we seem to be very much in the midfield. It’s an area that we’re working on, but we don’t yet fully understand."
Shovlin also explained how this year's new-generation cars can no longer rely on brake temperatures to help warm up tyre compounds.
"Before you could get the hot air from the brakes straight onto the rim and you get a very rapid transition of the heat there through into the bulk of the rubber," he said.
"The regulations have been designed to make that difficult and they’ve succeeded. But we need to understand why we can’t match the midfield teams.
"We know Red Bull and Ferrari have got more downforce right now but we should be able to perform in the same position that we’re racing in, which is realistically the third quickest team."
Although Russell and Hamilton will race to the best of their ability, Shovlin isn't expecting Mercedes to outperform significantly in the Sprint event or in Sunday's race.
"This is not a great track for overtaking so we expect the rest of the weekend to be a challenge but we have shown that our race pace is better than our single lap and with both the sprint and the main race we have longer than normal to try and recover."
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
