Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says his team needs to be back to its best if it is to win this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.
Despite having arguably the fastest car in Formula One, Sebastian Vettel has claimed back-to-back victories in 2018. In Australia, Vettel jumped Lewis Hamilton under the Virtual Safety Car period, while in Bahrain, impressive tyre preservation from Vettel meant Valtteri Bottas was given limited opportunities to pass the Ferrari driver in the latter stages of Sunday's race.
Speaking ahead of this weekend's race in Shanghai, Wolff stressed the need to learn from recent races and believes the threat from Ferrari and Red Bull in 2018 means that perfection is required.
"This is not the start to the 2018 season we had hoped for," Wolff said. "For two races in a row, we did damage limitation with one car and lost the win with the other. Both races were decided by fine margins - but that doesn't make it any better. In fact, it probably makes it more frustrating.
"The competition is extremely close in 2018 and Melbourne was already a strong reminder that there is absolutely no margin for imperfections or mistakes in this year's title fight. While we saw a completely different race in Bahrain and lost for different reasons, the message stayed the same: In order to win this year, we need to bring our A game."
Mercedes has dominated at the Shanghai International Circuit in recent years, winning every grand prix in China since 2014. The first back-to-back set of races of the year gives Mercedes a chance to "right the wrongs", according to Wolff.
"We started to analyse what went wrong in Bahrain in order to improve for China and come back stronger. We're quite happy that this is a back-to-back race as that means that we won't have to wait long to get racing again.
"Shanghai has been a good track for us in the past, so hopefully we will get the chance to right some of the wrongs of the past weeks and show a performance that is worthy of Mercedes."