James Ellison: I’ve been trying to get everyone back together

Mercedes technical director James Allison spoke about the measures it is taking to achieve more efficient and coherent performance and ultimately overcome the team’s prolonged period of failure to win races. The only exception in the past two seasons was George Russell’s victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix last year.

In the spring, Mercedes began reorganizing its technical department, returning Ellison to the position of technical director, while Mike Elliott replaced him as technical director, before parting ways with the team in early November.

According to Ellison, the team has changed significantly over the past two years.

“If a team is performing consistently at a very high level for years and for some reason there is a dip in performance, it’s very disorienting,” he told the Performance People podcast. – If you suddenly feel that the foundations you have laid in your time have been shaken and the stopwatch shows the real picture, and you are inferior to your opponents, it is very unpleasant.

The organization’s self-confidence decreases and at some point the entire company experiences great pressure due to a bad car and poor results. Next, an attempt should be made to unite all divisions of the company – the aerodynamics department, the vehicle dynamics department, the design department – so that all specialists join forces to create a more efficient chassis. So that each of them, responsible for his or her work area, is aware of everything that is happening and contributes according to his or her own insight.

If the approach is chosen incorrectly, all these groups of specialists will no longer be able to communicate with each other, because they are all completely focused on solving their own problems.

Perhaps in our case, the most destructive processes began when the company entered a period of difficulties – then we lost the champion’s crown for the first time, and this led to a more serious division within the team than could have been possible. And not at all because someone had an argument with someone.

In fact, the team’s morale was incredibly high considering the pressure they were working under, but everyone involved in the effort to overcome this situation was somewhat divided. And if I have succeeded in achieving a positive result, it consists in the fact that I have tried to unite everyone again. I wanted the lead engineers working in the company’s key divisions to communicate more with each other, so that the pressure each of them felt would decrease dramatically and we would coordinate our work more effectively. If we succeed, everything will be much better.

What I’m trying to say is that since returning as technical director I have done things that have nothing to do with nuts, bolts, springs, shock absorbers, fenders or underbody. These are purely personnel matters, but as you move up the ranks they become an increasingly important part of your job.

I hope that we have been able to put together a reasonably effective program for creating the W15 chassis, which will ultimately allow us to compete for victories again. First of all, I always think only about championship wins, because the most important thing in Formula 1 is winning both the title and the constructors’ championship.

However, when we look at the history of Formula 1, the statistics are against us. If a team begins to experience a period of declining results, it will typically not be possible to return to the previous level for a long time. However, we have put together a very ambitious program and have already made significant progress in creating next year’s car. However, only time will tell to what extent our efforts will be sufficient.”