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The Mercedes was fast in Monaco last year. Photo: AC

Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton are expecting to have a competitive car in Monaco next week, especially given the team’s form there last year.

In 2012 Michael Schumacher qualified on pole while Rosberg finished second in the race. Further evidence of the team’s potential on the street track was arguably provided in qualifying in Spain, where the silver cars were quickest in the twisty third sector.

“Monaco I always look forward to,” said Rosberg when asked about his hopes by this blog. “I really like the track and I’ve always gone well there. Finally getting a good result too last year, after many years of coming close in a way. And Mercedes, we really did a good car there last year – we had the best car there last year, so there’s no reason why we can’t be good there again, definitely.

“But it is such a special, unique place that you need to go there with not too high expectations, because you don’t really know what other people have done for that specific track, which is so different to anything else.”

Hamilton confirmed that the 2012 form had given him some encouragement.

“I was back home in Monaco just the other day and they’d almost prepared the track fully,” he said. “I was running round and thinking Michael put it on pole, so it must have been pretty good. So I’m hoping that’s the same this year.”

However Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was a little more cautious: “It’s a drivers’ track, we have two quick drivers, it’s low grip, not very high energy [put into the tyres], so we could be looking competitive. But do I know? No.”

Leading Japanese business newspaper Nikkei says that Honda’s return to F1 will be confirmed by the company president Takanobu Ito “some time soon.”

Other reports from Japan say the announcement could be as early as this week.

Nikkei says that as has been widely expected the manufacturer will be back with McLaren in 2015, leaving the team with a single year with the Mercedes turbo.

While Honda’s plans have been an open secret apparent confirmation from the sources of a respected Japanese media outlet is nevertheless an interesting development.

Martin Whitmarsh refused to confirm in Spain that McLaren has not taken up its option to continue with Mercedes into 2015.

While a one-year delay would seem to give Honda plenty of time to see what Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari have done one rival manufacturer told this blog that if Honda does race in 2015 it would still have to fix many key parameters before other engines appear in public in January 2014.

Pirelli has now formally confirmed that it will change the construction of its tyres in time for the Canadian GP.

Motor sport boss Paul Hembery had said after Spain that changes could come for the British GP, but the schedule has been moved forward by one race.

“Our aim is to provide the teams with a new range which mixes the stability of the 2012 tyres and the performance of the current ones,” said Hembery. “As a company, we have always moved quickly to make improvements where we see them to be necessary.

“After evaluating data from the first few races this year, we’ve decided to introduce a further evolution as it became clear at the Spanish Grand Prix that the number of pit stops was too high. The Spanish Grand Prix was won with four pit stops, which has only happened once before in our history. These changes will also mean that the tyres are not worked quite as hard, reducing the number of pit stops.”

Intriguingly in mentioning the one previous Pirelli win on four stops Hembery was referring to Turkey 2011 – forgetting that Spain that year was also won on four, with a near identical schedule to this year’s.

“With limited testing time, it’s clear now that our original 2013 tyre range was probably too performance-orientated for the current regulations. However, having identified this issue, we’re determined to rapidly resolve it. It’s worth underlining that the current regulations for winter tests limit the opportunity to test the tyres under the same conditions as the race season because of the lower temperature and restricted time.

“The Teams are of the same opinion as we are in wanting longer testing times and different locations for the next tests. We developed the 2013 tyres on the basis of careful simulations that were, however, not sufficient, taking into account the improved speed of cars (up to 3 seconds per lap).”

Hembery confirmed that Pirelli had also stepped in to reduce the instances of delaminations caused by track debris. He’s repeated the assertion that he made last weekend that Pirelli would rather see a tyre come apart than have it delaminate – even though the latter case could allow a driver to get safely back to the pits.

“It’s important to point out that these delaminations, which occur when the tread comes off, do not compromise the safety of the tyres as the core structure of the tyre is not affected in any way, helping drivers to complete the lap and to change the damaged tyres safely. These delaminations were due to damage from debris that overheated the tread.”

He added: “We’d like to thank all the teams for their continued and extremely valued support as we worked with them to identify the correct compromise between the pure speed that makes us the world leader in the Ultra High Performance sector and a global spectacle that is easy for Formula One fans to follow.”

Sebastian Vettel kept his World Championship lead by salvaging fourth after a below par race for Red Bull in Spain, but afterwards the German could not disguise his frustration about the role of tyres in 2013.

Pirelli has since confirmed that it is making more changes, but on Sunday Vettel was keen to point out that the revised hard introduced in Spain didn’t help RBR.

“I think obviously there were three people that did better today, and we need to catch up,” he said. “Surely we’re not going the pace of the car, we’re going the pace of the tyres.”

Vettel downplayed the suggestion that by going for four stops winner Alonso was able to push throughout with no apparent concern for the tyres. RBR also switched Seb to four in response.

“You can’t push for 15 laps or 20, in the end it doesn’t make a big difference, the question is whether you can reach 20 laps or 15. I think for us at the beginning we were trying to do it on three stops, but we had to admit that tyre wear was too big for us today, and we couldn’t stay with the cars ahead.

“I think we knew pretty much before the race that it was three or four stops. In the end we expected a little bit more from the new hard tyre, which didn’t help us at all.”

The Spanish GP has re-ignited the debate about Pirelli’s tyres and the impact on the racing in 2013 . The Italian company now finds itself struggling to keep everybody happy, but it has confirmed that it may make changes by Silverstone.

Here’s what its motor sport chief Paul Hembery had to say on how the race unfolded, tyre failures, and possible changes.

Nico Rosberg made his mark with a second consecutive pole in Spain, and while he knew Sunday would be tough for Mercedes the race proved to be even worse than he expected – although his three-stop schedule did at least get him home six places ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

Here’s the latest episode of his video diary, including a visit from his cat…

Lewis Hamilton was in downbeat mood after his difficult race in Spain, but remained adamant that his Mercedes team could solve its current problems with race performance.

Hamilton tumbled from second on the grid to 12^th at the chequered flag, his early progress not helped by a glitch at his first stop that saw him get a late signal to leave. However inevitably tyres were the main problem for the Briton.

“There was no grip today, just sliding around on all fours,” he said. “Just tip-toeing around, basically. It doesn’t matter whether I go slow or go fast, it doesn’t do anything different. It’s very, very strange, one of the strangest feelings I’ve had for a long time.

“It was clear that something was not right when I was behind the Toro Rosso and behind the Williams, because we are obviously so much quicker in qualifying. Clearly something was majorly wrong.”

Hamilton admitted that the team is unsure of what to do to solve its problems.

“It’s something we had a long discussion about just now. We’ve just got to try and understand where we went wrong, and how we can improve it for the upcoming races.

“But it’s something to do with how you prepare the tyres, or use the tyres, or something like that. It seemed to work quite well in Bahrain, but it didn’t work here. It’s something that we haven’t quite caught on to just yet.”

He said it was too early to focus on the next race in Monaco: “I’m not really thinking about that at the moment. I’m just thinking about how I can improve the team, how we can correct it. I’m going to do absolutely everything I can with these guys to really put it back together. We’ve clearly got a great car, it’s clearly a fantastic team, and there’s nothing I don’t believe we can’t solve.

“Like I said, I’m not really thinking about Monaco. I’ve really got to try and digest what’s happened today. Falling from second to 12^th, that’s a big drop. I just need to go back with the guys and really question all of the engineers that we have, put ideas into their heads, and get ideas from them about what we can do to improve next time we go out.”

He remains confident that the problem will eventually be solved.

“It’s not rocket science… I don’t know why it’s taken us so long to grab hold of it, but clearly Ferrari have, and so have the Lotuses figured it out. We just need to do that. I’m sure we will at some point.

“I think if we just all pull together, which we have been doing all year, but now it’s more important than ever, particularly after a race like this. We just need to take a step back, look at what happened today objectively, and try to figure it out.”

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh has reiterated his support for Sergio Perez after the Mexican enjoyed a solid weekend in Spain.

Perez comfortably outqualified team mate Jenson Button to start eighth, although come the race the roles were reversed and they finished eighth and ninth, with the Briton ahead.

“I think he’s finding confidence,” said Whitmarsh. “I think the racing at the last race, hopefully it was good and spirited, and qualifying here was good. He’s learning. He’s still very young and he’s had a lot of pressure, and we haven’t given him a good enough car. He’s doing a great job, he’s had another piece of learning today, he’s had a bit of a master class from Jenson about how to drive through with these delicate tyres.”

Whitmarsh says Perez wasn’t obliged to hold station behind Button in the latter stages in Spain.

“It was a fair fight, but if you’re asking did we ask him to back off and not fight? No we didn’t. His tyres were finished at the end. We could see the tyre wear energy, and we were worried that he was going to end up without any rubber at the end of the race, and he virtually did – if you look at his tyres there’s nothing there.”

Ferrari boss Stefano Domencali says that the update packages brought by the top teams to Spain made little difference to the pecking order – and adds that we are unlikely to see big gains after the next couple of months.

Fernando Alonso gave the Italian team its second win of the year in Barcelona.

“For me this weekend was important just to understand the jump in terms of performance we could expect from the other teams,” said Domenicali, “because from now up to the end of July you may see one or two big steps of development, and no more. And then I’d say some teams will be forced to try to start work on the new car. I think it’s really a crucial part of the season.”

Regarding the impact of the latest car developments on the status quo in Spain, he said: “It seems that everyone has moved more or less with the same kind of improvement. I don’t see a big change. If you look back last year, there was a totally different situation, in Spain you’ve seen that some teams have done a better jump. Of course all depends on the level of the quality of the project that you do in the winter, the quality and level of performance of the first race package.

“So that’s why I believe now in the next two or three months we’re going to see really where we’re going to be, because I believe that after so many years of stable regulations, the fact that to find much more performance is getting more and more difficult, I don’t say that it will be impossible, but it’s a challenge to everyone.”

Meanwhile Domenicali insisted that Ferrari’s plan had always been to run four stops in Barcelona to give Alonso the opportunity to push hard and make up ground from his fifth grid spot.

“We knew that the key of the strategy, and honestly since the beginning, since last night, was to attack and to jump on the traffic. But not every time you can do it.”

Domenicali also confirmed that Alonso had made his final stop prematurely, due to worries over a deflating tyre.

“It was not a serious problem. We had a sign that the tyre was starting to go down slowly. However the strategy was to stop two laps later, and in order not to risk anything because of course we were controlling the pace of Kimi we decided to do that in order to avoid any extra stress at a certain point.”

Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery says that the Italian company will probably revise its tyres in time for the British GP at the end of June.

Pirelli had already changed the hard compound for Spain. However Hembery conceded that the four-stop strategies employed by most of the front runners in Barcelona – including winner Fernando Alonso – represented one stop too many.

“Strategy was again at the forefront of the Spanish Grand Prix, which as usual was very demanding on the tyres because of the unique characteristics of this circuit,” he said.

“This is why we saw high levels of degradation, which should not be seen again to this extent for the rest of the year. Our aim is to have between two and three stops at every race, so it’s clear that four is too many. In fact, it’s only happened once before, in Turkey during our first year in the sport. We’ll be looking to make some changes, in time for Silverstone, to make sure that we maintain our target and solve any issues rapidly.”