Mercedes has urged caution heading into the final six grands prix of the F1 season despite the surprising dominance of George Russell's Singapore Grand Prix triumph.
During qualifying at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Russell hit a sweet spot with the W16 that propelled him onto pole position, and a comfortable fifth win of his F1 career, for which he was never challenged.
The triumph, alongside Kimi Antonelli's fifth place, has strengthened Mercedes' hand in the fight for second position in the constructors' championship, elevating it 27 points clear of Ferrari, with Red Bull a further eight points adrift.
Going into the closing quarter of the campaign, starting with next weekend's United States Grand Prix around the fast-flowing Circuit of the Americas, followed by high-altitude races in Mexico City and São Paulo, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin feels there may still be tough times ahead for Mercedes, and not to read too much into Russell's Singapore exploits.
"Just to try and manage expectations here, if you look at the circuits that we've been strong at, and particularly the races that we've won this year, Montreal, Singapore, they're relatively low-speed tracks," said Shovlin.
"There's no doubt that this car is working well at that slow-speed corner region where we seem to have very good grip, and the drivers have very good confidence in the big braking zones.
"What we haven't had so much of in those tracks is the high-speed cornering content, and that's perhaps an area where we've struggled a bit.
"We're still working on that, still trying to look for every little bit that's there in setup, but that's certainly something that's coming.
"If you look at a track like Austin, it's got a very, very fast sector one, so we need to make sure we can perform in that area.
"It was encouraging to see that the car can still win races. We saw a brilliant performance from George, and the whole team has really been fired up from this, and that's given us a lot of energy to take into these final six races.
"Very different circuits coming up. We're going to have to do a lot to adapt the car, but we're definitely not going to give up the fight."
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Join RacingNews365's Ian Parkes, Sam Coop and Nick Golding, as they look back at last weekend's Singapore Grand Prix! Lando Norris' move on Oscar Piastri is a major talking point, as is Max Verstappen's title chances now being very much alive.
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