Mercedes: Montreal 'more of a challenge' for W14 than Barcelona

Mercedes believes its upgraded W14 will face a bigger challenge in the Canadian Grand Prix than it did last week in Barcelona where the team achieved its first double-podium finish of the season.

Mercedes rolled out its heavily updated car at Monaco, but the changes really came into their own at the Circuit de Catalunya, where the performance of the W14's more stable platform took a big step forward.

While Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were unable to reel in Red Bull's dominant Max Verstappen, the pair outpaced its main Ferrari and Aston Martin rivals in the race, allowing the Brackley squad to leap-frog Aston in the Constructors' standings.

But Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' trackside engineering director, believes the outfit's car will likely struggle to uphold its Barcelona form due to Montreal's high-downforce characteristics.

"The fact is that the update kit works very well around circuits like Barcelona with a lot of high-speed performance," Shovlin said in Mercedes' post-race debrief on YouTube.

"We've been better at the fast circuits and the front-limited tracks. We ended up with a really good balance and really good race pace.

"Now, where we are going to go next week, Montreal, it's a very different circuit. There are more low-speed corners, quite a lot of straight-line full throttle and we would expect more of a challenge there.

"We are not thinking that we are going in nipping at the heels of Red Bull. We are aware that Canada is likely to be a bigger challenge than the Sunday we just had in Barcelona."

Read also:

• Horner: Mercedes no closer to Red Bull despite updates

Shovlin reckons Mercedes will be battling at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve next week with its usual opponents, but the Mercedes engineer also expects Alpine to join the fight behind Red Bull based on Esteban Ocon's podium performance in Monaco.

"We are thinking it will be more along the lines of some of the earlier races where we were definitely in the bunch with Ferrari, with Aston, and now Alpine look to have joined that group," he said.

"But it's great racing there. It will be good fun and we are certainly going to be fighting to find every little bit of performance we can.

"The way the grid stacks up now you can be P2 or you can be P10, and there are only a few tenths in it."

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