Russell: 'We want to get P2 in the constructors championship'

In Barcelona, the extent to which Mercedes' sweeping updates are working should become clearer. At the track that all teams know like the back of their hand, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell' s team will at least hope to beat Aston Martin and Ferrari. Whether Mercedes can become the second team behind Red Bull Racing will be seen in the coming days.

For the first Grands Prix of the season, Aston Martin seemed to have the upper hand over Mercedes, with Ferrari an equal match to the Germans. But: "I think when you look on Saturday performance, we're certainly behind Ferrari and Aston Martin, and sometimes the Alpine as well."

'A lot closer to Aston Martin'

A day later, everything is often different: "When you look on to the Sunday performance, we're probably a little bit closer to Aston Martin, but this weekend will be a good test. We'd like to think we can jump ahead of Ferrari, globally close that gap to Fernando as he is definitely pretty fast and try and get close to get to Red Bull and get P2 in the constructors."

The track in Monaco is so unique that it is difficult to judge whether the updates at Mercedes will have an effect. On a more classic track like Barcelona, there is more insight on that. "As everybody else is saying, you can't really judge anything in Monaco, but there were certainly no nasty surprises and considering how much we changed, I guess that was a positive in itself, but this will be a true test," Russell told.