Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is hoping for "another step forward" at the Spanish Grand Prix after learning the lessons from Miami.
The weekend at Hard Rock Stadium provided both optimism and frustration for the Brackley-based team. George Russell set the quickest time of anyone in Practice 2 on Friday, but Mercedes would fail to replicate the same performance across Saturday and Sunday.
However, with around 10 days to find out why that was the case, Wolff is hopeful the push to solve the W13's problems will continue in Barcelona.
“With the third quickest car underneath us, we extracted the maximum points possible in Miami,” the Austrian reflected in his Spanish GP preview.
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“During Friday practice, the car showed flashes of its true potential. We continued experimenting with set-up, fitted some new components and that provided us with answers and indications of which direction to go in.
“A huge amount of hard work has been going on in the factories to unpick the data from Miami and turn it into improvements for Barcelona.
“Having run there in winter testing, albeit with a car that has evolved a lot since then, it will be a good place to correlate the information we have on the current car and we are hopeful we will make another step forward."
While Wolff thinks Mercedes is on the path to progress, star driver Lewis Hamilton is less optimistic.
“Unfortunately not," he said on if Miami had been a "positive step" for the team.
“We’re the same speed as we were in the first race and we just haven’t improved in these five races.
“But I’m hopeful at some stage we will. We just have to keep trying and keep working hard.”
After five races, Russell's consistency has kept him fourth in the Drivers' Championship, 45 points behind Charles Leclerc and 23 ahead of teammate Hamilton.
While in the Constructors', Mercedes sit 62 points behind current leaders Ferrari.
But with at least 17 races still to go, depending on if a replacement for the Russian GP is found, Wolff isn't giving up on anything just yet.
“In basketball terms, we head to Barcelona at the end of the first quarter of the game," he said.
"We know once we translate the learnings we’ve made into track performance, there is still a lot of the game left to play.”
𝓔𝓼𝓹𝓪ñ𝓪 here we come!! 👏 pic.twitter.com/EfFqJCih1q
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) May 16, 2022
