Shovlin sees familiar pattern: 'The longruns look good'

Mercedes hopes to experience in Barcelona to what extent the sweeping updates work. Judging purely by the ratings of drivers Lewis Hamilton (P11) and George Russell (P8), there is still plenty of room for improvement. Hamilton even hinted in Barcelona that reaching Q3 is going to be a hell of a task on Saturday.

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' technical man looked back on Friday's two practice sessions in a press release from his team. He saw a day with two faces: "It was difficult to read the order in the first session, because the extra prototype tyres meant everyone deviated from their normal run plans. Our programme in FP1 was biased towards long run work on the new tyres and it does give us the data we need ahead of their full introduction at Silverstone."

'Longruns look good, for qualifying work'

In the afternoon Mercedes worked on finding the right set-up for qualifying and the race: "The second session was more normal and the conclusions for us were quite familiar; single lap needs a bit of work and long run looks OK. We looked at two different wing levels, which is useful as we have a bit of data to study to understand the effects on tyres and overall pace. We've got a good idea of what the limitations are in terms of balance and hopefully by the morning, we'll have come up with a few solutions to those issues," Shovlin said.

Mercedes already introduced the sidepods, the new front suspension and the new floor in Monaco. On the streets of Monte Carlo, it was difficult to judge whether the changes worked. At a normal circuit like Barcelona, it should be more clear whether the direction taken is the right one.