Mercedes have long been waiting for their upgrades on the W14 to take effect.
First set for a much-anticipated unveiling at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, that was delayed by the heavy downpours which led to the race being cancelled.
And the lay-out in Monaco is such that the team were never going to really gain any real information as to whether it was a positive step in the right direction or not.
So, the acid test was coming in the two afternoon practice sessions in Barcelona on Friday, the second drawing to a close at around 5pm BST ahead of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Mercedes and those aspiring for a championship beyond the current Max Verstappen and Red Bull procession have long been hoping for a silver bullet from the Mercedes revamp.
But going into the weekend, Hamilton has put forward a more realistic appraisal of how it might shake up the order this weekend.
“When you bring upgrades, naturally you should be progressing forward,” he said. “The fact is it’s an improvement, it’s just not the improvement that we had dreamed of. But it’s one step at a time.”
When the aspiration was to claw back the one-second-a-lap advantage that Red Bull has in terms of race pace, it was never going to be achieved despite the boffins at Mercedes’ disposal back at their Brackley headquarters.
Work will be done to further try to whittle down that advantage. James Allison, who only a few weeks ago returned to his position as technical boss to oversee the Mercedes rebuild, readily admitted the new-look W14 had still not cracked it.
Instead, he and his team were now poring over photographs in the past week of the championship-leading Red Bull at Monaco to effectively see what else their rival has that Mercedes hasn’t.
And Hamilton said: “I think we have taken note of where we are and where we have gone wrong, and now we are slowly chipping away and trying to navigate all the way back to the front. It’s just a long process unfortunately.”
It is hard to look beyond anything but a Red Bull victory this weekend. The team have won 16 of the last 17 grands prix, the one exception being the Brazilian win last season by George Russell, a result which slightly papered over the cracks at Mercedes.
Ominously, Verstappen has now set himself and his team the target of winning every single remaining race in 2023, which looks perfectly achievement.
For his part, Russell, who endured a challenging race in Monaco, sounded a marginally more optimistic note than his teammate before stepping into the car for the opening practice sessions today.
He said: “We didn’t learn anything from Monaco with regards to the new updates, So, this would be where we would take a new baseline and build from there.
“But there were certainly no nasty surprises. Considering how much we changed, I guess that was a positive in itself. But this will be a true test.”
