F1 News
James Allison: "Happily, it's not me that makes that choice"
Mercedes techincal director James Allison is thankful he doesn't have to make a choice on George Russell's 2025 teammate, after Lewis Hamilton's departure to Ferrari. Allison was full of praise for Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who has been rumoured to take Hamilton's vacant seat.
In his press conference on Friday, Allison was asked whether Mercedes would choose youth or experience when picking Hamilton's replacement for the 2025 season. "Well, happily, it's not me that makes that choice. So to the bigger dogs to answer that."
Full of praise for Antonelli
Despite shying away from the question of Hamilton's seat, Allison was still full of praise for Mercedes junior Kimi Antonelli, who has been heavily linked with the Mercedes seat, as well as potentially taking over at Williams this season.
"Well, I have had the great pleasure of listening to the engineers describe the interaction with him," Allison said: "Just a young, enthusiastic driver. Very, very fast. Metronomic in his pace. Has not been in an F1 car until recently, but made it look like he'd been in one for ages, within a lap or two. Came at this generation of cars, the ground effect cars, with an open mind.
"Yes, he feels all the same things that you'd expect him to feel, but he's not sort of polluted by the previous car, so he just takes them as they are and tells us what he would do, what he is feeling as weaknesses and strengths, and lets the engineers work to try to improve those things. But he looks like a very promising young driver."
No concern over key personnel leaving
With multiple staff leaving Brackley, Allison said it is no cause for concern, and that it is becoming a normal part of working within Formula 1.
"I think it's more in the normal ebb and flow of an F1 team. The teams are big these days. And in any given year, you are shipping out a whole bunch of people and shipping in a matching number. That'll be true in nearly every team."
Allison continued saying "I don't think there's any point in me offering a commentary on motivation, clearly a team needs to have a critical mass of experienced and good people and we would not wish to see experienced good people leave us but we also are gathering experienced and good people at a similar rate so, I guess it's our job to try and make sure we react in such a way as everybody would rather be with us than anywhere else."