Mercedes’ Chief Technical Officer James Allison says the new Formula 1 regulations being introduced in 2022 can prove that luck was not behind its dominance in the turbo-hybrid era.
Since 2014, Mercedes has won the Constructors’ Championship every year, and has missed out on just one Drivers’ title, which occurred last year when Red Bull’s Max Verstappen ended its streak.
In 2022, new technical regulations are being introduced, aimed at closing up the competition, as well as allowing for more wheel-to-wheel racing.
Allison has spoken of the challenge that comes with the new regulations, and believes that one or two teams will get their cars “really badly wrong”.
But with radical changes coming to the cars, Allison says that they give Mercedes the opportunity to showcase that it didn’t fluke its way into success over the last decade.
“We try to pick our way through the potential minefield, picking up all the little boxes of treasure that may be set in amongst the landmines to end up with a car that we hope will see us pitching at the front of the grid,” Allison said.
“It’s not unique to Mercedes to be excited about a regulation set. But it is something I can speak of, with the personal experience of having been a part of this team, that we do love it when new regulations come along.
“We see it as an opportunity to show that we haven’t just been lucky over the years, we haven’t merely stumbled into a formula, as if we sort of stumbled into some God given right to have been dominant all these last seasons.
“We see every single regulation change as an opportunity to pit our wits against them [other teams] and see whether we actually deserve still to be competitive, that we’ve understood the physics behind the car.”
Allison highlighted the hardship that team members go through when producing a new car, leading to further validation and satisfaction if it is successful.
“All of us give our working lives to this sport and quite a lot more, and the validation of knowing that you can pick up a set of regulations like this and work with them, when that’s realised, it’s a brilliant feeling,” he said.
“It makes all the hard work – and there is a measure of sacrifice to it as well – it makes all of that entirely worthwhile.
“You get way more payback, from feeling like you’ve done a good job than you do suffering from all the effort that went into providing that good job.
“So this team does have a culture that treats such opportunity with excitement and pleasure, and a chance to demonstrate to ourselves that we hopefully are not bad at doing racing cars.”
I don’t think anyone has complained that Mercedes have been lucky to produce such dominant cars over the last eight years. I certainly haven’t. However, what I have complained about, and quite rightly, I feel, has been their steadfast refusal for the last five years to put a top driver in the second car and give the fans a decent title race to follow. Comparison of Rosberg’s record pre-2014 against during the three seasons 2014-2016 shows that without a totally dominant car he was nothing about which to write home, but even he was several classes above Bottas the carpet, who was entirely undeserving of such a car on talent, and meekly subservient in moving out of the way on the rare occasions he managed to luck into being ahead of his teammate. Mercedes has insulted the sport and its fans by persisting in the maintenance of this ridiculous and unhealthy situation for so long.