A long-awaited upgrade package - featuring new sidepods, front suspension and floor - will debut at the Monaco Grand Prix as Merced🎐es look to close their performance gap to Red Bull after starting a second consecutive season well off the pace.  

• Hamilton ‘excited’ to try Mercedes upgrades after being “lost”
• TECH GALLERY: Mercedes' long-awaited upgrades break cover 

Monaco is not usually a track where teams would ꦦchoose to introduce major updates given the unique challenges and risks posed by the ꦗfamous barrier-lined circuit.

Davidson, who also acts as a simulator driver for Mercedes alongside his punditry duties for Sky, reckons a conventional circuit l👍ike Barcelona will provide the team with a much more representative picture. 

"Visually the car 💮does and will look very different out on track," he explained. “Performance-wise, that’s yet to be seen.

"This is a difficult circuit to judge performance on in terꦅm of upgrades. This circuit is more about emphasis on the driver, how you get the tyres working. 

“Yes of cours🔯e you need downforce, but this track doesn’t reward efficiency of your downforce package. It just rewards how you work the tyres and pure downforce on your car. Even if it’s a very draggy car, you can still go well here. 

“So we’re not really going to see how well these upgrades perform until we get to Bar🙈celona, which is a great testbed.” 

Hard to draw conclusions at 'one-of-a-kind' circuit 

168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:George Russell echoed Davidson's comments, stressing it will be difficult for Mercedes to ﷺdrawn any firm conclusio🐈ns this weekend. 

"We are aware this is a very one-of-a-kind circuit and we are no💧t going to read anything into the perfo༺rmance that the new updates show this weekend," he said. 

"There are always outliers in teams who over p💙erform around tracks like Monaco and teams that underperform. But ultimately we don't design a car to be at its peak in Monaco.

"I trust in the 🅠team and I don't think there will be anything scary with the upgrade that throws us off-piste. We will treat it as a one-of-a-kind 𓃲and then re-evaluate in Barcelona. 

"I am glad we are proc🦂eeding with it because you always want to put as much performance on the car as possible and it would have been a demoralising weekend for all of us 💃had we known we had a bit of performance on the table."