Mercedes made sweeping changes to its aerodynamic and mechanical package, which were supposed to run at last weekend’s canceled Imola race.

Despite the “unique” challenge facing Monaco, the team decided to keep the new components on the car and learn as much about them as possible.

As such, Russell said Mercedes must stick to its vision of the new formula until next weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix to make a real assessment.

“We’re not going to really decipher the performance shown by the new update this weekend,” Russell said.

“There are always outliers between teams that do well at a track like Monaco and teams that don’t do well at Monaco. But at the end of the day, we design cars that don’t peak in Monaco.

“You look at some of the teams in the last 10 years, like Ferrari, they’ve been very strong here.

“So we just have to get through the weekend and do a review once we get to Barcelona and go from there.”

Russell conceded it could be advantageous to start the Monaco weekend with a familiar car, but insisted the potential performance gains outweighed any such concerns.

“I think you always have to go into a track like this with a certain level of respect and you need to be ready for it,” he said.

“But I believe in the team. And I don’t think there’s anything terrible going on about this new update, which completely throws us off-piste.

George Russell, Mercedes-AMG

Photography: Simon Galloway/ motorsport pictures

“So as I said, we’re going to treat this weekend as a kind of one-of-a-kind weekend and then we’ll evaluate it again in Barcelona. But I can’t imagine what’s necessarily going to hold us back.

“Honestly, I’m glad we went ahead with the update this weekend because you always want to improve the performance of the car as much as possible.

“It would have been a frustrating weekend for all of us if we knew we’d sat in the factory and achieved something.”

Russell stressed that the new kit produced positive results in the Brackley team’s simulator, although he hinted that if there is a clear benefit in terms of driver confidence, the actual benefits on track could be even greater.

“So far, our forays into the simulator have been positive,” he said.

“It’s both aero and mechanical. Aero is usually just talking about the overall downforce that every driver, every team is after.

“So it doesn’t necessarily guarantee lap times, but it certainly brings performance.

“Mechanically, once we get to the track, we’ll have to wait and see. There’s an argument that it might work better on the track than in the simulation because it will give us more confidence driving the car, and in the simulator, confidence doesn’t. Not really a limit.

“So it makes sense that there’s probably more to be gained on the track than what we see in the sim.

“As I said, we’ll just have to reassess next week. And it’s always challenging because while there’s a lot of talk around our updates, other teams will also be bringing updates, especially next week.

“So I can’t imagine a huge improvement in anyone’s performance because we’re all changing those goals.”