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Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison says “it’s quite early in the season to be diagnosing what your car is great at or what it isn’t great at, because the car’s not a fixed thing”.
During his appearance on the F1 Nation podcast, returning Mercedes Technical Director James Allison was asked which circuits might favour the W14, but he refused to speculate.
“It’s quite early in the season to be diagnosing what your car is great at or what it isn’t great at, because the car’s not a fixed thing,” Allison said.
“It’s a platform that develops all the way through the year. If I had to pluck something out of the air now, I’d say that we tend to be a little stronger at the front-limited circuits, rather than the ones that are heavily real limited.
“So a Bahrain-type track is all about how well a car will look after its rear tyres. Melbourne was a bit more on the front-limited end of the spectrum. Other front-limited tracks, Barcelona’s one, Silverstone another.
“But honestly, it feels too early to be predicting that because these are young rules, this is a young car, and there’s plenty to give to it.”
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The Briton then said Mercedes still has plenty of wiggle room when it comes to upgrades.
“The flow of new parts has already happened. You pretty much have a different car every weekend you take it racing.
“Sometimes it’s a few more parts, sometimes a few fewer. But we’ve had new things for each of the races.
“Baku won’t be any exception, and I would hope that we can keep that coming. You’re constrained by cost caps and stuff eventually.
“But we’re at a stage in the season where there’s still plenty of firepower there to keep putting lap time on the car weekend by weekend,” Allison concluded.
