Mercedes technical director James Allison blasted speculation about the team favouring one of its drivers in the Formula 1 world title fight, calling the idea “alien”.
In the team’s Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show, it took the unusual step to address online speculation about Mercedes prioritising its drivers – with various comments accusing the team of somehow favouring both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli.
Mercedes, which famously had to manage a tense intra-team rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, has refuted the comments, while team principal Toto Wolff has already stated it won’t use team orders unless there is a threat from a rival.
Wolff’s comments came off the back of Russell and Antonelli losing time fighting on track at critical moments during the Barcelona GP, which gave Hamilton an opportunity to strike on his way to victory for Ferrari.
“People are very invested in the people that they support and they want their driver to prosper above all others,” Allison said. “All I can say is if you ever wanted to understand where it [favouritism] sits on our psyche, you’d need to come and work in a team.
“Because if you were lucky enough to come and work in a team, you would instantly be imbued with the culture of that team and you would understand how utterly alien that thought is to anyone in the team.
“And when we hear it, it’s like we’re hearing another language.”
George Russell, Mercedes, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Allison detailed how Mercedes, like all teams, earns prize money from its position in the F1 world constructors’ championship and therefore needs both drivers to maximise results, given the world drivers’ championship has little bearing on the teams’ prospects.
“It is in all of our interests that both our drivers prosper,” he said. “Actually, we’re ambivalent about which one is better than the other. We want a 1-2 in every race and we don’t care the order.
“The only point where we would start to have an opinion is if one driver is mathematically incapable now of winning a championship and the other driver is in a fight with a third-party driver. At that point, the team has a right to an opinion.
“But up until that point, we just want both our players to be right up there every single race. Because our main championship, weirdly, is not the drivers’ championship. It’s the constructors’ championship.
“If we’re lucky enough to win a bonus, we win it on the basis of the constructors’ position, not the drivers’. We don’t get anything for that.
“So, everything we care about is constructors-oriented and favouritism makes zero sense to us in that respect. We just want maximum points from both the drivers at all times.”
James Allison, Mercedes
Photo by: Erik Junius
So Mercedes will continue to give Russell and Antonelli equal treatment for the foreseeable future while both are in the drivers’ title fight, with Antonelli leading the standings by 41 points from Hamilton and Russell is just nine points further back.
Mercedes, meanwhile, has a comfortable margin in the world constructors’ championship, 72 points clear of Ferrari, with the Barcelona GP only the second round it has not scored the most points collectively – McLaren outscored the Brackley-based squad by three points across the Miami GP weekend.
Mercedes ‘not as quick as we need to be’ in Barcelona, but virtual safety car timing helped Hamilton
Reflecting on Mercedes’ first grand prix defeat of the year, Allison felt Ferrari’s upgrade package was able to close the performance gap between the two frontrunning squads and while his team lacked outright pace he alluded to the timing of the virtual safety car giving Hamilton a vital aid to his victory charge.
“The overall thought is of a disappointing weekend. OK, we got a strong podium, but after winning all of the opening races to have a DNF with one car and a P2, it’s definitely not the weekend we were hoping for,” he said.
“But the opening stint with George was very strong. But then it fell away in the subsequent two, allowing Lewis to go off on his three stop, his lone three-stop adventure and where we didn’t have the pace to match that.
“If the virtual safety car had not come out when it came out, then it probably still would have been a very tall ask for Lewis to have got the win. Nevertheless, we would have wanted to be in a position where we weren’t relying on the vicissitudes of a safety car or no safety car.
“So it was overall just we weren’t as quick as we needed to be.”
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images
Allison gave credit to his former team’s upgrades that debuted in Barcelona and he expects the momentum between the frontrunners to be heavily influenced by when each team delivers updates and how potent that package is.
“Ferrari did bring quite a significant upgrade to this race,” Allison said. “I think what you’re seeing mostly there is these are very young rules. Our car was launched with a bit of a head start [in performance] on the other teams, a head start that we’ve been able to maintain for a number of races. But the fact that the rules are so young mean it is relatively easy at the moment because the rules are not yet as explored as they might be to find performance.
“And an upgrade package, a significant upgrade package, is worth about as much as the gap we had between our car and the others at the beginning of the season. So if Ferrari bring an upgrade package to a race unanswered by one of our own, then it will close the gap that previously felt comfortable. I think that’s mostly what we’re seeing.
“Of course, we’re not without guns in this fight. And in due course, our car will receive its own upgrades. As long as we can keep the overall development slope in the factory steep and then deploy it when we think it’s sufficient to do so and suits us to do so, then we should be able to re-establish the gain that we had at the beginning of the year if our development slope in the factory is matching everyone else’s.”
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