Andrew Shovlin: We'll learn a lesson from the unsuccessful experience.

      According to Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' chief race engineer, the drop in performance that occurred during the European rounds of the season is partly explained by the fact that the team rushed to fit an upgraded rear suspension to George Russell's and Kimi Antonelli's cars without waiting for the results of its "in-lab" testing.

      This suspension first appeared on the W16 in Imola, but in Monaco and Barcelona it was reverted to the previous version and then brought back in Canada, where Russell took victory and Antonelli reached the podium for the first time. However, that was aided by relatively cool weather and the characteristics of the Montreal circuit's layout.

      "By the time we introduced that suspension, we had certain issues that affected the work that had been done in laboratory conditions," RacingNews365 quotes Shovlin. "And that meant we received the test results much later than when we began using it on track.

      "Of course, by then we had already analysed everything in detail, because that suspension was not used in Monaco and Barcelona, and then we used it again in Montreal.

      "Now the team base is continuing a thorough analysis of all the information gathered to understand exactly what went wrong. If it's confirmed that there's a problem with this version of the suspension, we'll learn a lesson from this failed experiment — that's reality.

      "Adjusting an existing suspension design is always quite difficult, because you inevitably have to make some compromises. But the data we get will be useful when developing our next car."