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Mercedes Technical Director James Allison explains how Mercedes could have gotten “much sooner to the performance we’re at now”.
After Mercedes suffered a significant drop in performance in 2022, the team faced a big decision on how to proceed in 2023.
Unfortunately they decided to stick with their 2022 design philosophy, encouraged by their 1-2 victory at the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
However, after the first race of 2023 they realized that they were wrong, and decided to proceed in a different direction.
Now, Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison explains exactly where the team went wrong.
“There was a big debate internally,” Allison told The Race.
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“Should we cash in that 15mm and drop the car down, operate the car in a window that is 15mm smaller, because the cars will be less bouncy inherently?
“Or should we do more of what has done us well over the course of the year, which was force ourselves to keep looking for downforce where it’s difficult high up?
“These rules don’t reward you [with downforce] high up, it’s really hard to find, but that brought us some benefits over the course of last year. So the debate raged internally for a while.
“The logic was it’s very hard to predict because the tools are not especially good for this, anyone’s tools, not just ours. They are not very good for predicting exactly where bouncing is going to be incurred.
“It’s much harder to back yourself out of having driven off the edge of a cliff and finding yourself bouncing than it is to be too high, not bouncing and then lower yourself towards it.
“So the outcome of our internal debate was let’s err on the cautious side, let’s keep trying to find downforce where it’s hard and if it turns out we’ve been too cautious we will spend the months that follow working quickly to recover that.
“And if we’re lucky and others cash in the 15mm – and without tools that prove to them everything will be fine, I remain of the view it was a gamble – then they’ll all bounce and we’ll be the smart ones for having taken the cautious approach. So that was the route.
“Now, as it turns out it was too cautious, it was possible to cash in the 15mm. We would have been better placing our chips on that part of the roulette wheel.
“Then we’d have got much sooner to the performance we’re at now,” Allison concluded.
