George Russell has cast doubt on Mercedes being able to take any significant learnings from their upgrade package brought to the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. The cancellation of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix means that Mercedes have opted to introduce wholesale car updates to Monaco instead. The highly-anticipated updates include a move away from their infamous 'zero sidepod' bodywork design, along with front suspension modifications. Given the quirky nature of the Circuit de Monaco, Mercedes would have been forgiven for delaying their updates to the next conventional race venue in Barcelona. However, whilst Russell admits that the team aren't expecting to gain any meaningful information from their race weekend, he believes the team were correct to not leave 'performance on the table' by leaving the updates back at the factory.
"We're obviously aware that this is a very one-of-a-kind circuit, and we're not going to really read anything into the performance of the new updates this weekend," Russell told media, including RacingNews365.com . "There are always outliers in teams who overperform around a track like Monaco and teams who underperform around Monaco, but ultimately, we don't design the car to be at its peak in Monaco. "I don't think you'll learn a lot at all from a race weekend like this. "So, whatever we take away from this weekend, we'll take with a pinch of salt, and go into Barcelona with a clean slate. "Monaco is very challenging. I think everybody struggled last year with these new cars, the ride is exceptionally poor compared to the 13-inch [tyre] era of cars. "But we're not just going to sit on performance [updates] and not use it. Perhaps it's bold, but it was always the case to run this package in Monaco."
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