Mercedes Technical Director James Allison has admitted the decision to overhaul the chassis and gearbox on its 2024 Formula 1 car took a “chunk of our available firepower.”
The German marque is aiming to return to race-winning ways after enduring an underwhelming previous two years under the sport’s latest ground effect aero regulations.
Despite climbing one spot to second in the Constructors’ Championship in 2023, Mercedes trailed a sizeable 451 points behind Red Bull, who won 21 of the 22 races.
Mercedes’ competitiveness since the rules reset had been thwarted by the ‘zeropod’ solution, which it ultimately elected to abandon midway through the last season.
Having converged on a less-than-optimal version of the downwash sidepod philosophy due to limitations surrounding the launch-spec architecture of its W14, Mercedes has pursued a revamped car concept this term.
Speaking before the launch of the W15, Allison details how the wholesale changes made compared to its predecessor can be traced back to the middle of last season.
“The design of any car is an iterative process,” Allison said. “And a long one at that. It stretches back to last year.
“A new car enables the team to make bigger alterations that are not possible during the year. These are decisions that are taken during the preceding summer.
“But the main approach is unchanging from year-to-year, and that is to try to deal with the things that you’ve identified as weaknesses on your current car. Those weaknesses are revealed most starkly when the competition starts. But you get a reasonably good idea quite early in the year of what the Achilles heel might be of a car.
“From there it is about balancing out working to improve those Achilles heels and building on what has worked well.
“You look to your available resources from varying departments and get them to focus their attentions on fixing the issues. As time goes by you can start taking more and more people off the current car and divert their efforts towards the next one.”
Allison details that one of Mercedes’ primary development aims was dialling out the rear-end instability that regularly hampered both drivers with its recalcitrant W14 machine.
“A big focus has been on improving the previous car’s unpredictable rear axle, which the drivers often referred to as spiteful,” Allison elucidated.
“We have worked on that to try and create a car that is reassuring to the drivers. At the beginning of a corner when you’re hard on the brakes and turning in, the rear needs to feel rock solid. And then as you get towards the apex, the car needs to feel progressively more nimble, and eager, to turn. We have been trying to build that into the car.
“We’ve also worked hard to create a less draggy car, and to add performance in the corners.”
Allison has also echoed the comments of Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff regarding the Brackley squad’s desire to improve upon its pit stops from last season.
“There’s also been some housekeeping on areas in which we had room for improvement, including the DRS effect, and pit stop performance,” he added.
“We were always very good at delivering a pit stop in a repeatable time, which is the key thing for a pit stop.
“The repeatable time that we could do our pit stops in was still three to four-tenths slower than the best teams, though. So hopefully we will have moved in the right direction there.”
Allison concedes that electing to start afresh with its chassis and gearbox this season has meant it had to be more conservative in other areas due to cost cap constraints.
“A new chassis and a gearbox were standard for every year, pre-cost cap,” he acknowledged. “And there’ll be several other teams who have done both things in a single year.
“But the cost cap does force you to pick and choose your battles, and there’s no doubt that having a new outer casing as well as at the same time as having a new chassis are two big projects that are going to take a chunk of our available firepower. That is what we have done this year.
“It does mean that in other parts of the car we have not tried to reinvent the wheel. But it has allowed us to undertake a couple of big projects without breaking the bank and we believe that this is a good and important use of our efforts.”
Allison, who returned to his current post last April, outlines Mercedes has achieved its targets with the W15 but admits that its progress is dependent on the opposition.
“I feel like we have delivered on all the things we said we wanted to do,” he proclaimed.
“Some aspects are unbounded and therefore you can never be fully satisfied. We will not know until we run the car truly.
“But I think we can say that we feel like we have worked well. Formula One is a relative game. Whether we’ve worked well enough to be competitive, only time will tell. We do not know what everyone else has done.
