Brought to you by Aramco: bit.ly/3WHpLas The debut of the much-anticipated Mercedes upgrade package at Monaco was inconclusive, but it gives us a clear indication of the direction Mercedes has staked its long-term hopes of transforming from also-ran into title challenger on. Monaco allowed Mercedes to get started with a package that was visually dramatically different and represented the first deviation from the zero-sidepod concept used since the start of this ground-effect regulations era. The results at Monaco didn’t look dramatically different to usual, with Lewis Hamilton sixth fastest in qualifying with a deficit that was only fractionally closer to the front than the average Mercedes disadvantage the first five race. Hamilton finished fourth, ahead of Russell. But there was still something to learn both for Mercedes and The Race, so let’s take a closer look at the changes and the rationale behind what team principal Toto Wolff called “a fundamental shift in the design dir