Mercedes can breathe a sigh of relief after the Spanish Grand Prix. It finally seems that the team has taken a step in the right direction with the new updates, which allowed Mercedes to fight for a podium place on Sunday. The encouraging signs, therefore, come at the right time.
George Russell finished P3 in Barcelona, after keeping Max Verstappen behind him for a longer time. The Dutchman suffered from DRS problems, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Russell managed to defend his position in an impressive way.
"There are positives to take from the weekend, not least a fine drive to the podium for George with some brilliant defending against the Red Bulls. The most encouraging thing is the improvement in pace that we have seen this weekend; a lot of hard work has gone into understanding the issues and bringing parts to the track for this race," engineer Andrew Shovlin said on the Mercedes' press release.
Hamilton exceeds Mercedes expectations
Lewis Hamilton, on the other hand, had to deal with bad luck again. At the beginning of the race, the Briton collided with Kevin Magnussen and had to make an early pit stop due to a flat tire. Nevertheless, the seven-time world champion managed to drive back to P5.
"Lewis didn't have any luck. He drove brilliantly and out-performed our expectations to make it back to fourth only for a water leak to force him to concede the place to Sainz in order to make sure we finished," Shovlin continued.
The next race on the schedule is Monaco, a circuit with a lot of low-speed corners. "We've got some parts in the pipeline that can hopefully help in that regard," he said.