Allison: We hope we have corrected the main deficiencies of the chassis

James Allison, technical director of the Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, extended his contract with the team for a further three years, which was one of the biggest news stories of the past week.

Mercedes, including Allison, has long said that the shortcomings of last year’s W14 could not be corrected without radically reworking the entire chassis, so almost all components in the W15 are new. Last year, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell failed to win a single race, and one of the biggest problems that bothered the drivers was the unpredictable behavior and unstable operation of the rear of the car, including during braking.

Speaking of the W15, Ellison does not hide the general optimism with which Mercedes is preparing for the new season, but of course makes a significant reservation.

“At this time of year the mood can only be cautiously optimistic – we feel excited and anxious at the same time. Before the start of the season, the emotions are always something like this,” said the technical director of the factory team of the Stuttgart group. – I can imagine that even those who work at Red Bull, after such a successful season, are now not having the most restful sleep, because no one knows what their rivals are preparing.

But we still hope that we have been able to correct some of the main shortcomings characteristic of the rear of our car, that the behavior will become friendlier and the car will become more comfortable to drive. So far this has all been felt while working on the simulator, but we have enough reasons to believe that we have been able to bring about changes for the better.

In addition, we also solve all the usual problems – we try to make the chassis lighter, increase downforce, and we also hope that motorists can slightly increase the efficiency of the power plant due to the better calibration – they still have the opportunity to to do this under the conditions of the current regulations.

Time will tell if all this will be enough. We knew that our car had some shortcomings, we assumed what the problems were related to, but now we have gotten to the bottom of their causes and we can eliminate them. It will be interesting to check how correctly we were able to make the diagnosis.

Technically, I don’t think any team can do anything other than be cautiously optimistic at this time of year. I think only a crazy person would be overly confident, because you only know one side of the equation: you only know what your team has done.

Of course, in some years it happened that you took a new car to the track for the first time, the driver tested it and then said: “You are entitled to a bonus, it turned out to be a great car.” But even in this case, you only fully believed it when you, together with the whole team, really tested the car in battle mode.”

The presentation of the W15, Mercedes’ new car, will take place at Silverstone on February 14. After the traditional first run-in, the car will undergo its first full check during pre-season testing, which will take place in Bahrain from February 21 to 23.