James Allison has revealed that he’s preparing for battle against “worthy opponents” Red Bull. The Mercedes engineer, who recently swapped position said that the battle with the defending champions will be interesting as he’s ready to “hunt” them down.
After a dismal start to the 2023 season, Mercedes resorted to taking the service of Allison yet again. Allison who was the Chief Technical Officer in the Silver Arrows, will now hold the Technical Director’s role in the team.
⚠️ | James Allison on Mercedes’ aims for 2023:
“We’re completely realistic about the significant performance of Red Bull, and particularly Max.
“They’re going to be extremely worthy opposition to hunt down and, in due course, overtake.”
— formularacers (@formularacers_) April 25, 2023
Talking about his target on Red Bull, he revealed, “We’re completely realistic about the significant performance of Red Bull and particularly Max.” The Austrian team picked up three wins out of three races this season.
“They’re going to be extremely worthy opposition to hunt down and in due course overtake,” concluded the renowned engineer from Great Britain. Allison swapped positions with Mike Elliott, who went back to the position of Chief Technical Officer.
Allison relieved because of this feature of the W14
Reliability has been a big issue for the teams in the past as well as in the present. Any team that’s just fast can’t win the championship just because of its speed. As we’ve seen in the case of Ferrari last year, reliability plays a very important role.
On this, Allison is relieved since the W14 by Mercedes is very reliable. Admittedly, the Silver Arrows has been the team with fewer DNFs on the grid after the new regulations were brought out.
James Allison provides an honest assessment on the W14, and confirms that there will be upgrades bought to the car in Baku (thread):
[@Motorsport_IT] pic.twitter.com/QDHBRv99dD
— Mercedes-AMG F1 News ✇ (@MercedesNewsUK) April 25, 2023
Talking about this, the British engineer stated, “It’s reliable, touch wood.” But until and unless it’s fast, it’ll always be a weak car.
It was Mike Elliott who called in the swap
Speaking about the swap, the 55-year-old revealed that it was Elliot’s idea to swap the position back. This comes after speculations came up that Mercedes might have brought Allison back to pick them up from jeopardy.
Allison said it was Elliott’s own investigation that made him feel he was not good enough for the position after he took over the role as the director. Allison left for the CTO role in July 2021.
Admittedly, Mercedes has been underperforming and not living up to their standards ever since Elliott took over as the director. It’s not easy to say what caused their downfall, but if Allison can bring back the good old days, Adrian Newey will finally have a worthy opponent to fight.
