© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison attended the Canadian Grand Prix Friday Press Conference. Here is the full transcript.
Q: James, thank you for waiting, let’s go in talking about the Safety Car if I could as well – because of course one of the two Safety Cars we use in Formula 1 is the AMG GT Black Series. Just your thoughts on the Safety Car please.
James ALLISON: I thought that was a very poised answer! Because I tend to only think about the Safety Car in terms of what it does in a race when it comes out and you have to deal with it. I guess I’m guilty a bit of taking for granted the fact that it plays an important part in keeping everyone safe when there is obstruction on the road and stuff. I don’t really have anything particularly wise beyond that to say.
Q: Give us some wise thoughts on where Mercedes is at now? Lewis told us yesterday that there is a new energy at the factory in Brackley, following the double podium in Barcelona. Would you agree with him?
JA: I certainly loved the good result we had in Barcelona. That puts a smile on everyone’s face. Probably a little bit too soon to say that summer has arrived with that one swallow – but nevertheless, everybody enjoyed seeing a car that was going at a decent lick, looking after its tyres, scoring two podiums on merit. So, hopefully, we’ve turned a bit of a corner. I think this track is going to be very different in the challenges it places on a car but I think we’re gently on the up.
Q: What feedback did you get from the drivers in Barcelona, just about where the car is better with these upgrades?
JA: I think they felt a bit happier under braking but there’s so much more to do to make it competitive with the front of the grid that I think the main thing people were responding to was just the pace. It wasn’t… I don’t think it felt like a lovely car to be in, it was just going at a decent lick, balance was not too bad and a good return on the effort that everyone had made to bring those upgrades forward.
Q: While we’re talking performance, can we talk about the tyre test you did in Barcelona after the Grand Prix? What conclusions did you draw about the 2024 tyres?
JA: Well, the tyre tests we did after Barcelona was about running without blankets. It’s a test that’s controlled by Pirelli. The things that they’re asking us to test are stuff that they have invented, and we just provide a car that circulates around, hopefully at a decent lick, while they make their conclusions. I’d say that the early look at running without blankets, it’s not exactly a done deal to think that that’s going to be a good thing next year. I’d say there’s plenty of challenge to make that work.
Q: It gave you a good opportunity to see what Mick Schumacher can do inside the car, were you impressed?
JA: Well, he was, I think, very, very aware that the job of a driver in those circumstances is just to be a decent metronome for the tyre guys to make their conclusions about the tyres. And given that if we shunt the thing, that you’re actually paying for all the repairs out of the cost cap, it’s definitely not to shunt the thing. And so he drove nicely, repeatably, reliably, and gave us the platform for the tyre engineers to make their conclusions.
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QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Jon Noble – Motorsport.com) Stefano Domenicali and Mohammed Ben Sulayem have talked about reducing car weight for ’26, saying the current generation is too heavy. As we potentially head to heavier batteries for ‘26 as well, how realistic is it to get a dramatic weight reduction for ‘26? And how best can that be achieved with the current generation of cars in terms of safety and the hybrid power unit?
JA: Well, I strongly agree with Stefano, and he’s not alone in thinking that this sort of inexorable upward trend in weight is something that has to be arrested and then reversed. Because, you know, year-on-year they were getting heavier. It isn’t super trivial to get the weight moving in the other direction. It is particularly tricky to dream up technical rules that are going to make the car much lighter. The way to make it lighter, I think, is to lower the weight limit and make it our problem. If cars are over the limit, then it forces us all to make some fairly difficult decisions about what we put in our cars and what we don’t. But not everyone agrees with that point of view. But that’s sort of, I think, the most guaranteed way to put downward pressure on the weight of the car.
Q: (Simon-Olivier Lorange – La Presse, Momtréal) Mr Allison, it’s the third year you’re operating under the cost cap. I was wondering in this third year, is it still a struggle to navigate through this and do you feel that it has achieved so far the goal that was to maybe tighten the gap, maybe not right now with the Red Bull performance, but on the field between the teams?
JA: I think it’s way too early to judge the effect of the cap on tightening the grid. I just think you’re going to need to have many more years play out before that, you’ll see the effect on that. Certainly, in terms of understanding the rules. I think we’ve pretty much… I think all the teams pretty much understood them by the end of the first year. Is it difficult to deal with it? Well, there’s been a downward movement of the cap, by regulation, that definitely means that there is a harder and harder environment in which to work. I think broadly, the cap has been a positive thing for the financial health of the sport, for the security of the teams. Probably more work to do to reform it and make it a better set of regulations overall, but in that respect, no different to the sporting or technical. They’re all a work in progress and they all gradually find their path as we learn things and as the sport changes. But I think too early to say that it’s going to have any meaningful effect on compressing the grid.
Q: (Edd Straw – The Race) The ATR limit that Red Bull has got, the extra disadvantage, obviously managing that is a challenge; how much easier has managing that been made by the fact that you’ve got such a good advantage in terms of how you allocate resources on this year’s car and next year’s development? And James, how big a missed opportunity is there to put greater pressure on Red Bull to make it a little bit more difficult for them, given the pace advantage they’ve got? Obviously you’d like to be closer for other reasons but is that a secondary effect that there’s a weakness you haven’t been able to maybe exploit by putting a bit of extra head scratching pressure on them?
JA: From my perspective on it, each team has its own personal ATR limit based on what happened to them over the past little while. And from Mercedes’ perspective, we’re just trying to work the best we can with our own ATR limit, not worrying too much about the people behind us who have more or the people who were behind us having more or the people in front of us having less. I think as regards to lost opportunity, don’t really separate out the ATR particularly from every other aspect of resource that we brought to bear on the current car we have, which is clearly not competitive with respect to Red Bull. Until it is, we’re all going to feel a bit miffed about that, even though that sort of unhappiness we see every time they win is offset hugely by the fact that it is thrilling in its own way to be fighting back, to be improving our car week-on-week and to hold clear in our heads the target that they’re not, they’re not some sort of… they don’t have a God-given right to be in the lead, they’re there by merit, having worked really well. And if we can do as good or better job we’ll be there. And that is actually a lot of fun. It’s a very, very exhilarating thought once you frame it correctly in your head, and something that we’re all tucked into trying to make a reality.
Q: James, do you think Lewis finds the fight back as thrilling as you do?
JA: I don’t know, I find it really thrilling. I think that both our drivers are very similar to the rest of the team in that if you sense that there is a change of momentum, that gives you a huge boost that you know that, keep this running, keep this running, keep this running and the good times and the champagne will flow again. That is just a good feeling up and down the grid. And for the drivers, who get the sort of visceral excitement of actually feeling their car overtaking other people, that lifts their spirits, but I imagine when they’re actually standing on the podium and reflecting on the fact that they’re not on the top step that may temper their enthusiasm somewhat.
Q: (Jon Noble – Motorsport.com) James, all throughout last year we were told that sidepod design wasn’t really a big performance differentiator and we had three different concepts. Now everyone’s going head first into the downwash concept. Can you just explain briefly why this downwash is the best solution for this generation of cars?
JA: Well, I’d be surprised if there was a side pod on the grid, ours prior, ours post, anybody, that is not a down-washing sidepod. They’ve been down washing for years and I suspect they’ll stay that way for some years too. And I would continue to suggest that the reason that a Red Bull is beating the rest of us will not be in the details of its sidepod nor the uplift in Mercedes’ pace with our upgrade, it’s not really particularly connected to its sidepod either. They’re just not that big a feature.
Q: (Adam Cooper – Motorsport.com) All three of you are in this situation with the cost cap, where you’ve got extremely senior people who’ve been moved sideways into special projects and designing boats and bikes and stuff and I think James has personally been involved in that as well. What’s your feeling on losing some of your most experienced, smartest guys because you can’t afford to put them under cost cap? And also, Christian warned last week that there was a danger of people replacing you guys with 10 cheap youngsters and he was saying that’s not the way to go. So just wondering what your thoughts are on that situation.
JA: Yeah, we’re racing teams but we’re also businesses and we make a decent amount of money doing jobs that are not in the racing world. If we misjudge who we put in there and end up hurting ourselves in F1 because we bleed away experience that should have stayed in the team, well, then we will have shot ourselves in the foot. And it’s, I guess, the challenge of all the teams on the grid to try and make sure that they get the balance right, so that they retain the best team they possibly can within the constraints of the cap, and that they make a decent wedge with the activities they do outside the cap.
Source: FIA.com
