Catching up to Red Bull will have to wait: Imola no-go puts car updates on hold until Monaco GP

The Imola Grand Prix was supposed to be where Formula 1 teams would introduce a raft of upgrades and updates to their 2023 cars. Unfortunately, the race was cancelled over safety concerns after heavy floods impacted the Emilia-Romagna region.

Among these was the Mercedes-AMG team, on whom all eyes are fixed in anticipation of a big performance leap, given their lacklustre start to the new campaign.

However, while critical eyes may have been justified, the Silver Arrows are still third in the Constructors' championship and within a shot of challenging Aston Martin for second place this year.

In fact, it is Ferrari who needed to make the biggest jump. The team is fourth in the Constructors' race and is basically competing against itself.

And so, the Imola GP would have been an important race for enhancing cars, but this will have to wait until the next race in Monaco (26-28 May) - although the circuit will be somewhat unrepresentative in gauging outright performance.

The combination track at Imola, with its slow and high-speed corners, would have been ideal to roll out any new updates. It can test the car's ability to go as quickly as possible while reaching the highest speed possible.

Like other traditional tracks, what works here is likely to work somewhere else.

On the other hand, Monaco is a high-downforce track where it's essential to enter and exit low-speed corners as quickly as possible. The layout and design of the Monaco circuit also decreases the performance gap between different cars.

However, if a team gets the setup wrong on the car, it will be a long race.

The top teams' updates

For Mercedes, 2022 and the opening races of '23 could have been better, but they still managed to keep a level of competitiveness. They