Mercedes must avoid being 'exposed' by hypersoft problems in Canada

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas struggled more than their main rivals on the new tyre, to the extent that the team even tried to get them through Q2 on the ultrasoft so that they would not have to use the softest-compound Pirellis in the race.

That tactic did not work and both drivers suffered extensive graining in the race, and Mercedes has been studying what it can do to make the W09 work better on the hypersoft.

"We saw other people up and down the field in a similar situation, but crucially for us the Red Bull looked stronger, and the Ferrari looked stronger," said trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin in a Mercedes video debrief..

"Now we've got some pretty good ideas of what went wrong, and we're going to be doing a bit more work to fully understand that, because we do need to get on top of that for Montreal.

"We've got the same tyres, you could have similar problems, and we need to make sure that we're not exposed.

"In Montreal if you lose pace, and you're suffering degradation, people will pass you very easily."

Shovlin also revealed Mercedes would run a different strategy with Hamilton in the race if it could do so again.

The world champion went to ultrasofts at his very early pitstop, a move later copied by all the other top five runners except team-mate Valtteri Bottas who went to supersofts.

Bottas showed good pace on the hardest available tyre, and Mercedes now says it would have been a good choice for Hamilton.

"We had tried that tyre with Lewis on Thursday, and he'd found it a little bit difficult to generate the grip," said Shovlin. "It's a harder tyre, it needs a bit more work to warm it up.

"The other thing is we expected the race leaders to go onto the ultrasoft, so it made sense to have Lewis there on the same tyre.

"If we were running the race again we would have probably gone with the supersoft with Lewis."

Along with the tyres problems Mercedes struggled for pace against its main rivals in Monaco.

Although it expected to struggle more there with its long-wheelbase care, Shovlin said there were still lessons it could learn to improve.

"In qualifying I think we were getting the tyres to work quite well, it was just a question of grip, and also downforce, and keeping them cool in that final sector," he said.

"In the race, though understanding this graining on the hyper was another matter, that won't be just down to the car performance.

"So, we need to look at what we were doing with the car, how we were using it, how we were setting it up."