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Mercedes made a splash in the F1 media when they announced that James Allison will again become the team’s technical director. James explains what led up to this decision.
Last Friday it was revealed that Mercedes decided to return the team’s Chief Technical Officer James Allison to his previous position of Technical Director, while current TD Mike Elliot assumed the CTO role.
Now, during his appearance of the F1 Nation podcast, James explained how the decision came about.
“We just had a bit of an examining of our own navels here in Brackley,” Allison said.
“And between Mike and I concluded that the pair of us can cover the ground reasonably well.
“But perhaps I was better suited to the short-term fighting of a championship with a car, and he was the much better chess player of the pair of us, and that he would be better suited to doing the job I was doing as a CTO previously.
“So we jiggled it about and came up with something that we think is a better fighting machine overall.”
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When asked if Mercedes’ strong performance at the Australian Grand Prix played a part in the decision, James said:
“I don’t think that this decision is particularly dependent on the fortune of the car at a given race weekend.
“It was based on a sober assessment of what the pair of us are best suited to. And we think that the overall fighting strength of this team is maximised by this role swap.
“Let’s hope that Melbourne is just the first step in a general pick-up and recovery that allows us to get more competitive by the weekend.
“But Mike and I are convinced that with the jobs that we’re setting out to do, that we’ll be playing our best part in that recovery in the time ahead of us,” Allison concluded.
