Valtteri Bottas puts Mercedes' recent struggles down to car setup and insists there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the W08's design.
Mercedes registered its worse two-car finish since 2015 at the Monaco Grand Prix two weeks ago as Lewis Hamilton finished seventh and Bottas fourth. The race highlighted Mercedes' struggle with this year's Pirelli tyres, as Hamilton struggled to get the tyres in the right working range for qualifying and Bottas failed to unlock the same pace as Ferrari and Daniel Ricciardo's in the race.
The result follows something of a trend after Hamilton also struggled with similar issues in Russia and Bottas battled to keep his rear tyres from overheating during the Bahrain Grand Prix.
"I think definitely most of it is setup and getting the car into a nice, stable condition and having it well balanced," Bottas explained. "Having the front and rear axle nicely balanced through all the corners, that makes the tyres work well and last well, so I think a lot of it will come from that.
"I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the car, it's still a strong car. Aero-wise it's good, mechanically it's good, but it's just really sensitive. Once we get everything in the right window then we can win again."
Bottas says the ease of getting the tyres in the right operating window varies from track to track and the setup in Monaco, which was designed to suit the circuit's slow-speed corners, caused some issues with the tyres.
"I think track by track we have definitively been performing better than in others, but Ferrari has always been good and their car always seems very good to drive, with good balance, good for the tyres. We did struggle more in Monaco, where we ran the car in a completely different way set-up wise, much softer suspension, etc. and that way we saw more of our issues.
"So definitely there are issues in slow speed sections, when there are a lot of cambers on the track and Ferrari seems to be more stable on that kind of tracks. You can see we struggle more in some tracks, but that is something we need to sort out, because we need to be good everywhere if we want to win the title.
"If we could go to Monaco again we could do a better job. I'm not sure we could still match Ferrari on Sunday, but we have definitively learned something.
"Here it's a very different track, with much longer straights, different kind of tarmac, so if we will perform here it's not like we suddenly found something magical. We have quite a few new things in the car, we'll try to set it up in a different way compared to Monaco, as we always do, anyway, but with all the things we've learned from Monaco in mind, about how we set-up the car there, so it's a good opportunity for us to bounce back from a tough race."
Asked what new parts are coming to the car for Canada, Bottas added: "We do have some more small update parts for the weight of the car, which is still getting better. I think we're getting very close to be optimal soon.
"We have some things on the engine side and some other reliability things and also something to do with the suspension. Small things here and there but not one that stands out. But there's plenty of things for us to test on Friday, yes."