Lewis Hamilton says he “definitely felt the improvements” of Mercedes’ updated W14 but says the team still has to unearth further gains.
Mercedes introduced its much-anticipated upgrade package in Monaco, which features revised sidepods, an amended floor, and altered front suspension.
Hamilton finished the day in sixth position, half a second behind World Champion Max Verstappen, and was cautiously optimistic.
“I think we got a lot of data,” he said. “It’s not the place to ultimately test an upgrade, but the car was generally feeling good. It’s a shame we weren’t as close as I hoped at the end of the session.
“But definitely felt the improvements, and I’m grateful for that. Just got to keep chipping away at it and see if we can squeeze any more juice out of the car.”
On whether he felt there was one area of improvement Hamilton said: “There is, I’m not going to say where! But there is, and it’s very clear where the lack of performance is for me. We’ll talk about that in the debrief. We’ll put our heads together, and try and figure out how we can do that within what we have. But hopefully this gives us a platform to build on moving forwards”
Mercedes team-mate George Russell had a more subdued Friday as he classified in 12th place.
“We’ll work overnight to see what more we can do just to try and get more out of the tyres,” he said.
“We know that the base performance of the car is good and we normally overachieve maybe on a Sunday and underachieve on a Saturday, so we’ll now try and flip those over this weekend.
“It’s now a matter of moments and it’s sometimes a bit baked into the car, so I’m not expecting tomorrow to be an easy day but we’ll work hard and see what we can do.”
