Mercedes has made wholesale changes to both its aerodynamic and mechanical packages that were supposed to run at last weekend’s cancelled Imola event.
Despite the "one-of-a-kind" challenges of Monaco, the team has decided to leave the new parts on the car and learn as much about them as it can.
As such, Russell says Mercedes must keep grounded in its outlook on the new package until it can make a real assessment next weekend at the Spanish GP.
"We're not going to really read anything into the performance that the new updates show this weekend," said Russell.
“There are always outliers in teams who over-perform around a track like Monaco, and teams who underperform around Monaco. But ultimately, we don't design a car to be at its peak in Monaco.
“You look at some teams in the past like Ferrari in the last 10 years, they've always been very strong here.
"So we just need to get through the weekend and take a review once we get to Barcelona and go from there.”
Russell conceded that it can be advantageous to start the Monaco weekend with a familiar car, but he insisted that the potential performance gains outweighed any such concerns.
"I think you always need to go into a circuit like this with a degree of respect, and you need to build up to it,” he said.
“But I trust in the team. And I don't think there's going to be anything that's scary with regard to this new update, that totally throws us off-piste.
Source: Autosport