According to James Allison, the Mercedes team was taken aback by their dismal performance in the Brazilian Grand Prix, as they had anticipated finishing in the top three.
With George Russell retiring from the race after finishing in tenth place and Lewis Hamilton finishing in eighth place, more than a minute behind eventual winner Max Verstappen, the team had perhaps their worst weekend of the turbo-hybrid era.
In fact, all weekend the Silver Arrows appeared to struggle in the high temperatures of Sao Paulo, with Lewis Hamilton calling his Mercedes W14 ‘pretty slow’.
A stark contrast to last year’s victory with George Russell – the higher ups at the team may be starting to get worried about the near second per lap that they have to recover before the opening round of the 2024 season at Bahrain in just four months’ time
Allison: Never in my wildest dreams
Speaking to the F1 Nation podcast about the weekend, James Allison – who has just returned to his original post of technical director, shared a chilling verdict on their performance.“
I just wrote an email back to the factory saying I’m knocked for six by it,” he said. “Because we came here – it would’ve been too much to imagine that there was a repeat of last year’s win because the stars would have to align somewhat for that. I felt we’d be troubling the podium.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we would have the torrid weekend that we just had. In some ways, there’s a comfort in that because we must have just got something wrong and we’ll go off and uncover what that was.
Hopefully, within the wonderful bubble that racing provides, we’ll return in a few weeks and hopefully put this behind us.
A long-winded conversation regarding setup direction will take place over the course of the next two weeks, prior to Formula 1 making its first trip to Las Vegas in the twenty-first century.
Vegas appears to be a fast-paced, high-speed circuit, which could exacerbate Mercedes’ problems and heighten their concerns that it might be harder for them to hold onto second place in the constructors’ championship than initially thought.
Leave a Reply