Ellison shares why he returned to his original role

James Ellison has resumed the position of technical director of the Mercedes AMG F1, but this is evident not only because the team urgently needed his help to solve problems related to the W14 chassis, but also because the changed situation allowed this in his personal life.

Until recently, Allison was involved in two tasks – preparing the transition to the new technical regulations, which will only come into force in 2026, but he focused mainly on a side project of Mercedes – working with the yacht team Ineos Britannia, which competes in the America’s Cup, one of the most prestigious regattas in the world.

But now James is back to day-to-day work with the Formula 1 team and has been quite candid about what happened before, taking part in the F1 Nation podcast on the championship’s official website.

In 2016, while Ellison was still working at Ferrari, his wife Rebecca suddenly died of bacterial meningitis, a tragic event that forced him to return to the UK to be closer to his family, after which he accepted an offer from Mercedes. The cars created with his direct participation won races and championships, but two years ago he chose to take on other projects in order to make better use of his time.

“This is largely due to the fact that my wife’s tragic death has overshadowed my life for a long time,” Ellison shared. – And I was lucky enough to meet another person a few years later – Chloe lived in France at that time, worked there for 20 years and generally spent all her life in France.

When, out of her kindness – though some would say foolish – she agreed to move in with me so that we could live together, she made a great sacrifice. It seemed to me that it would be unfair to leave her to herself and say, “Thank you for moving to England. Now we will see each other five minutes a week.”

When I left the position of technical director, one of the most important roles in the team, I was able to devote more time to our relationship, and now things are going great in this area. And without my decision, it would be difficult to achieve this.

But Chloe moved in with me more than two years ago, and since she had some roots in our country, she found herself a job that did not depend on me in any way, so now there are many more opportunities to return to her previous position than two with more than a year ago.”

When Ellison was asked how much he was involved in building the 2023 car, he replied: “I worked a lot less on the W14 chassis than I did on the cars that were built when I was technical director. I was more involved in the preparation of what lies ahead in 2026 than in the operational duties associated with this year’s car.

Of course, now it will take a lot of effort to improve in all areas, but it’s interesting, it’s exciting, and I’m happy to literally throw my head back into this work again. Fortunately, the W14 certainly has its strengths, it is reliable and driven by two very fast drivers.

The Mercedes car is better than many others on the starting field. But until it becomes the fastest, we’ll feel like it’s not good enough. Plus, it works pretty well with rubber, although not as well as some of the machines we’ve built in the past.

When it comes to downforce, the W14 has more of it than most championship cars, but it’s still not enough. The driving characteristics also leave something to be desired, so of course we have something to work on. But we all know this, we talk about it every weekend, and the team will have to solve these problems so that we get a car that we can fight for wins with…

The sooner we solve them, the better our chance of success at any stage of the season, against one of the teams. But we have an absolutely realistic attitude and we are aware that Red Bull has a significant superiority in speed, especially thanks to Max Verstappen. These are extremely worthy opponents, but we will try to catch up with them and, when the time comes, get ahead of them.