George Russell teases arrival of even more Mercedes W14 upgrades – and soon

George Russell has hinted that the British Grand Prix might bring the next significant batch of updates for Mercedes, after their success in Spain.

Mercedes introduced a raft of upgrades to the W14 in Monaco but their first test on a more conventional circuit came at Barcelona last weekend, with the team taking their first double podium of the season as Russell finished behind team-mate Lewis Hamilton in third and second respectively.

It was a positive showing from the team last weekend, even if team boss Toto Wolff tried to temper expectations by acknowledging the cool weather conditions put the car in an optimal performance window.

But moving forward, Mercedes are continuing on their path of making wholesale changes to the W14 after ordering a change of design concept, following a slower-than-anticipated start to 2023.

And Russell revealed that his and Hamilton’s home race could be one to watch for what the team may bring in early July.

“Yeah, Silverstone we’re excited for,” Russell told Sky Sports F1 in Barcelona.

“I think we’ll be in a good place there to fight for a good result. We might have a couple more things coming for Silverstone.

“But we need to not get too carried away with just this one result. The team have done an amazing job to bring these upgrades.

“I think Aston and Ferrari probably underperformed a little bit in the race today. So let’s see what the next races bring, but definitely a great step forward.”

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Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin echoed Wolff’s sentiment that the car worked well around Barcelona due to the circuit playing into the team’s natural strengths anyway, and the Canadian Grand Prix next weekend will present an altogether different challenge for them.

As such, he is not expecting to overhaul Red Bull in the short-term.

“The fact is that update kit works very well around circuits like Barcelona with a lot of high-speed performance, although the car itself probably would have been okay there because we’ve been better at the fast circuits than front limited tracks,” Shovlin said in Mercedes’ post-race debrief.

“So we ended up with a really good balance, really good race pace. Now where we’re going to go next week, Montreal, it’s a very different circuit, low speed corners, quite a lot of straight line full throttle and we would expect more of a challenge there.

“So we’re not thinking that we’ll be going in nipping at the heels of Red Bull. We’re going in there prepared for a battle with Ferrari, Aston Martin, maybe even Alpine.”