Mercedes impressed with efficient RB18: 'Fast in both aspects'

Mercedes does not expect the Italian Grand Prix to be as tough as the Spa-Francorchamps race. Both circuits require high top speed on the straights, something the Red Bull Racing car excels at.

Mercedes leaves for Monza after a competitive Dutch Grand Prix. The team was fast all weekend at the Zandvoort circuit and for a while it even looked like Lewis Hamilton could win the race. The same speed is not expected at Monza. The W13 is very dependent on track characteristics, and the long straights at Monza are not an advantage for Hamilton and George Russell. Still, engineer Andrew Shovlin expects the upcoming weekend to be nowhere near as bad as the Belgian Grand Prix, where the team drove in no-man's land.

"Fundamentally, the aerodynamics of the car will be very similar. We can run smaller wings but if we run smaller wings we got a bit less downforce and we are optimistic that some of the specific problems we had in Spa over the bumps shouldn’t affect us," Shovlin says in the Mercedes debrief on YouTube.

"We think we can get the car in a better working window. However, the Red Bull does look very efficient, it’s fast on the straights and it’s quick in the corners and those problems seem bigger for us when we go to the low downforce tracks," continues the engineer. It is therefore difficult for Mercedes to predict exactly where the team will stand.