Wolff warns that 'one swallow doesn't make a summer'

A cautious Toto Wolff is keeping Mercedes' expectations in check despite the team's productive race in Canada where it clinched its second podium in succession.

Lewis Hamilton finished P3 in Montreal, the seven-time world champion turning around his fortunes after a disastrous opening day of running at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve as set-up experiments led the team to a dead end.

On the other side of the Mercedes garage, George Russell crossed the checkered flag just behind his teammate, the young gun upholding his remarkable run of top-five placings since the start of the season.

The duo's results in Azerbaijan and in Canada were seen as a validation of the tireless efforts of Mercedes' engineers to get a grip on their car's bouncing issues and to unlock more performance from the Brackley squad's silver arrow.

But Wolff warns that it's still too early to consider that Mercedes' struggles are over, insisting that the team's path back to victory lane remains a long and winding road.

• Read also: Hamilton hoping Russell takes over Mercedes 'experiments'

"One swallow doesn’t make a summer,” a vigilant Wolff after last Sunday's race. "We saw that swallow in Barcelona but somehow it flew somewhere else.

"So, I think we need to be careful. We were off the pace on Friday, in the wet we were good yesterday, I think it was respectable.

"And I think that today at times we were with the quickest cars. In the second stint, Lewis and George were almost matching the front-runners – not quite, but on some laps – so that was very encouraging to see, but we need to be careful.

"There’s so much work we need to do to be back at the front and we aren’t there yet."

Newt week, Formula 1 moves on to Silverstone, a statistically fertile hunting ground for Mercedes which has won every race at the Northamptonshire venue bar one since 2013.

But Wolff says his team will rely on hard work to manage its prospects rather than on its remarkable British Grand Prix stats.

"Silverstone was good to us in the past and the circuit is smoother than the last three ones," said the Austrian.

"But it’s not Barcelona, so now we should manage our own expectations and really grind away, look at the data and come up with some sensible solutions, not just for Silverstone but going forward.

Wolff revealed the main leads his team is following to improve its car's performance.

"I think we just need to put more load in the car, more downforce," he said. "And equally do that with a car that is not as low on the ground as we have expected.

"It’s a clear direction, you can see the cars are going higher and this is where we need to find the performance."

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