Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admits a wrong setup direction meant the team "lost a session" as it finished well off the pace in second practice for the Monaco Grand Prix.
After topping opening practice on Thursday, Mercedes struggled in the second session with Lewis Hamilton 1.153s down on pacesetter Sebastian Vettel in eighth, while Valtteri Bottas was a further 0.1s back in 10th. Both drivers appeared to struggle to get the most out of their tyres on low fuel runs as they ended the session in the lower reaches of the top ten.
"We take the positives," Wolff said. "We've taken a wrong junction in setting the car up in a direction which we believed was good and now the consequences are that we are eighth and tenth, and many valuable lessons learned.
"The issue was an overall lack of grip which the drivers complained, not even just the front or just the rear, we just went out of the window everywhere."
Wolff said the team realised they had made the wrong setup choice during the session but simply had no time to turn it around.
"We couldn't back out of it," he explained. "We committed to the setup change, it's pretty dramatic. You need a couple of hours to undo that, more than a session would last so we decided to just push through and collect some data."
When asked if he is confident Mercedes can pull the deficit around come qualifying on Saturday, Wolff replied: "We were pretty competitive in the morning so we just need to backtrack it and that's not a very difficult exercise.
"Nevertheless we lost a session where we could have progressed a little bit, we are lacking data so it's now about sticking the heads together, staying calm and trying to work as good as possible for Saturday morning."