Ever since the 2022 regulations reset, the Silver Arrows of Mercedes has been struggling. After years of dominance during the turbo-hybrid era of the sport, the team have dropped the ball and now fight to get back up the field. On the back of their struggles, the team’s technical director James Allison has reportedly agreed with 7x champion Lewis Hamilton about how he doesn’t desing the car, sometimes, his insights into car performance are more detrimental than helpful.
Hamilton has been outspoken in the past about how Mercedes have seemingly ignored his inputs in getting the team back to the front of the pack. He was quoted as telling BBC Radio 5, “I’ve driven so many cars in my life. I know what a car needs. I know what a car doesn’t need. I think it’s really about accountability,” whilst revealing that the team hasn’t always warmed up to his technical advice.
2022 lewis hamilton is just him going through 7 stages of grief because of W13 pic.twitter.com/FZu4EYW8y5
— rin🐞 (@goatforty4) October 3, 2023
Be that as it may, the boys and girls back at Brackley have worked tirelessly to extract the maximum performance from their package. As a result, the team have clawed back performance. There’s no silver bullet in F1, however. Hence, the road back to glory is going to be a slow one.
Lewis Hamilton & Co. given a ‘technical’ reality check
Hamilton and Russell have been giving sound bite after another to the media about how troublesome the W14 is to handle. But it’s the same for almost every other driver on the grid, irrespective of their team. Up and down the grid, drivers always seem to complain when the car doesn’t comply to their whims.
But sometimes, their incessant nagging has its own downsides. Allison explained (as quoted on Twitter), “If a driver says the car’s lacking rear downforce, bang! I’ve solved it. Go to the rear downforce shop get me some rear downforce – that’s the point where it becomes less helpful.”
#F1: James Allison says Lewis’ comments on the new car are both help and hinderance: “I think that drivers sometimes conflate identifying a problem with knowing what the solution is. Where it’s a massive help is the accurate description of what is difficult about extracting lap…
— deni (@fiagirly) October 17, 2023
Allison continued, whilst specifically referring to Hamilton’s approach, “At that point you just have to accept the car is lacking in a certain thing and it’s out job, as Lewis rightly points out, he doesn’t design the car, it’s our job to respond with the solutions that bring that.”
F1 drivers need to learn their place
Formula 1 drivers are hardwired to win. Naturally, they can sometimes get too ‘involved’ when things aren’t going their way. To this, James Allison believes that a driver’s role in the developmental aspect stops at giving “[an] accurate description of what is difficult about extracting lap time from the car.” From there on, it’s better to leave it to the engineers to fix the problems.
Speaking of problems, the W14 is plagued with a host of them. But like Allison alluded to, the biggest area of focus for the Brackley-based team would be on the downforce. The team have been suffering from a lack of it that has led to an overall impact on tire wear, outright pace and cornering accuracy and speed.
That being said, the team seem to be on the right path at resolving those issues. Arguably, with the success they’ve found in mending the W14, the W15 for 2024 is the car they’re looking forward to, to finally give them that championship boost.
