Mercedes technical director, James Allison admits that he will be taking a close look at McLaren's upgrade package following its "rocket ship" performance at Silverstone.

Silverstone witnessed the second stage of a major upgrade package for the Woking team, and while the very nature of the circuit clearly suited the MCL60, there is no denying that the (Red Bull influenced) package has made a difference.

"We keep an eye on all the teams as they upgrade," admits Allison. "We take lots of photos and we try and figure out what changes from race to race. We note when something new or unusual comes along.

"The interesting and unusual thing about the McLaren upgrade is that its lap time effect is quite strong," he continues. "It's unusual to have a step of that size of relative competitiveness in the middle of a season and chapeau to them.

"They've done a good piece of work there, but that also makes it interesting for us because we have the before and after shots and we know the lap time effect was big. So it's well worth us paying more attention than we normally might to another team's upgrade because in this case, we know that whatever changed has made a meaningful difference to their lap time. It's quite useful for us to know what that was and see whether it can play into our own thoughts of developing our own car."

While the introduction of Mercedes upgrades began in Monaco, it was at the next race, in Barcelona that they really made an impact. After that however, it became clear the W14's performance is circuit specific, sometimes even varying from session to session, and while Austria represented a "bruising" weekend for the German team Silverstone was altogether different.

With this is mind, not to mention the fact that teams will introduce further upgrades, Allison expects the forthcoming races to be of a 'swings and roundabouts' nature.

"What you will get in this next sequence of races is a little bit of yo-yoing for position in a very closely packed bunch," he says. "Upgrades will make the difference for one team for a while, until someone else will come out of sequence with another upgrade a race or two later to even things back out.

"Where it will all settle down for the final quarter to one third of a season, we will see. Hopefully we will have our noses in front and be able to have a strong second half of the season."