Toto Wolff accused the Monaco marshals of unnecessarily giving away secrets about Mercedes’ new-look W14 ahead of qualifying on Saturday, questioning whether they really needed to remove Lewis Hamilton’s car with a crane following his shunt in final practice.

Mercedes brought a raft of new upgrades to Monaco in an effort to turn their season around, with the sidepods, the front suspension and the floor all undergoing major revisions.

While the sidepods and suspension are immediately visible to rival teams, Mercedes would have been hoping to keep the details of their new floor away from prying eyes for as long as possible.

Teams are not required to declare upgrades to their cars which are not visible to the naked eye.

However, pictures of the underside of Hamilton’s car were immediately emblazoned all over social media following his incident in FP3, with the car hanging suspended from the crane for what felt like an age. Engineers from rival teams are certain to pore over the images.

Wolff joked that the crane-operator “probably worked for Cirque du Soleil before”.

“I mean, honestly, I don't even comprehend,” said the Austrian after Hamilton finished sixth and George Russell eighth in qualifying later in the day. “The car was on the road, you could have put it on a truck, rather than showcasing it to everyone in the world. That was suboptimal for us, to say the least.”

Wolff later clarified that he did not want to criticise marshals per se and was only joking about with his quip about the ‘Cirque du Soleil’.

“Don't trash the stewards [marshals] OK?” Wolff said. “Everybody's doing their best. I don't want to be a team principal that lashes out at stewards that are doing their job.”

Wolff may have been consoled by the fact that rivals Red Bull also had the undercarriage of their car displayed to the entire world following Sergio Perez’s crash right at the start of qualifying.

Again, it was removed by crane although Wolff claimed not to have noticed. “Checo's car was the same?” he replied when asked about that incident. “I didn't see that. So they're all from Cirque du Soleil.”

Overall, Mercedes seemed happy with how their new upgrade package was working.

Hamilton – who squeaked through both Q1 and Q2 right at the death, nailing his final laps in both sessions – said he had made a change to the set-up in between practice and qualifying which had made the car more difficult to drive in the final sector. But overall, he felt it had been an “OK” call.

“Our middle sector was hardest for us all weekend, so I made a change into qualifying that made it harder for us in the last sector,” he said. “You can’t always have your cake and eat it.

“I struggled to get temperature into the tyres so it was always that last lap that I managed to just pull something out. My heart was in my mouth because there could have been a yellow flag or a red flag [which would have meant he would have to abort his final lap]. But we made it through and I’m grateful for the lap I got.

“[Overall] the team did a really great job in bringing these upgrades. You could feel it straight away, particularly at the front of the car.”

Hamilton admitted that he had been hoping to see Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso pip Red Bull’s championship leader Max Verstappen to pole.

“That would have been amazing,” he said. “The Red Bull is just too quick, but the Aston now is almost on a par. I’m happy for Aston and hope we can be there soon.”