F1 News
Mercedes technical director explains the reason for struggles at the US GP
Mercedes technical director James Allison has explained why Mercedes struggled so much at the recent United States Grand Prix. The Brackley-based team seemed solid on Friday, but their weekend deteriorated after that. George Russell crashed out of qualifying. Lewis Hamilton retired early in Sunday's race in similar incidents. To the naked eye, it seemed like Mercedes's new upgrade package had failed drastically and robbed the car of all rear grip. Allison has reassured Mercedes fans that the upgrade package was not the root cause of their issues, as he explains.
Mercedes sit in fourth place in the constructors championship, exactly 200 points behind first-placed McLaren. It's clear, therefore, that The Silver Arrows aren't battling for the title, but performing well in the final few races could be crucial for their 2025 development.
Allison: 'We have a whole heap of things that are not normal'
Mercedes left the Circuit of the Americas with only eight points. How and why did the team perform so poorly? Allison explained in Mercedes' Akkodis race debrief: "We had a bumpy weekend, and we had our new clothes on the car, our so-called update 19 that we were quite excited about and still are quite excited about. But we also had a whole heap of things that are not normal. Lewis spun in Free Practice. We had George nearly lose the back end of the car as well. George crashed in qualifying. Lewis spun off in the race," he began.
Mercedes had high hopes for their upgrade package and still does. They blame their weekend's issues on their setup choices for both cars. "All the things we measured suggested that the upgrade package was behaving as we would expect. The downforce was there. We did not see prior to the spins anything breaking down on the flow structures under the car. There is every reason to think the updates were good, and we will enjoy that for the remainder of the year. The spikiness that we saw pitched us into the barriers on an unusual number of occasions because we had the car too low, too stiff, and had the handling degrade unacceptably as a result." He revealed.
Drivers will be able to 'thrash it' in Mexico:
Finally, the Brit looked ahead to this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix. The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez sits an astounding 2,238m above sea level, and the technical director talked through how this affects the car. "You are running Monaco-level wings, but you get Monza-type performance because the air is all thin, and it just means the big wings produce less force. But the car does not feel much different to a normal car. The drivers will just be able to thrash it and hopefully, we will have a good race." Allison concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Jarlo van der Vloed
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