Allison: We did everything we wanted to do.

Returning to the role of technical director of the Mercedes team, James Allison spoke about working with the new car…

James Allison: “If you work on the layout of the new car for next season, you will continue to participate in racing. This happens simultaneously. When I talk about layout, I’m talking about the placement of the engine in the chassis, the geometry of the rear suspension, the gearbox and the positioning of the rider in the cockpit.

All this should be planned in the summer of the previous year. It takes a lot of time and effort, but you have to do it to make sure these decisions during the off-season bench and simulator tests meet your expectations.

We’ve done everything we wanted to do with the W15, but some aspects know no bounds, so you’ll never be completely satisfied. We won’t see the results until we test the car on the track. In Formula 1 everything is relative. Time will tell if we did a good enough job, at the moment we don’t know what the others were working on.

Cost control has forced us to focus on certain areas. The new aerodynamic body kit and chassis took up a significant portion of the available resources. But that’s what we focused on. In other parts of the car we didn’t try to “reinvent the wheel”, which allowed us to explore these two areas, and we believe this is a good and important use of our efforts.

Lap times depend on the efficiency of aerodynamics; further development is planned as the season progresses, the results of which will be noticeable when we return to Europe. Some programs won’t run, but that’s the nature of experiments. If you work intensively enough and conduct a wide range of experiments, the car should look decent by the time you return to Europe.

Particular attention is paid to stabilizing the unpredictable rear axle. The riders didn’t like it very much. At the beginning of the corner, during braking and corner entry, the rear axle must be stable and at the apex it must enter it with confidence. We have done everything possible for this.

In addition, we have carried out a number of works in areas where improvements are needed, including DRS and pit stop efficiency. We have always been very good at making pit stops in a consistent amount of time, which is essential. But at the same time they were three to four tenths behind the leaders. I hope the gap will narrow this year.”