Mercedes POSITIVE about winning F1 upgrade race despite McLaren leap

Mercedes

Mercedes POSITIVE about winning F1 upgrade race despite McLaren leap

Technical director says team have a chance of pulling ahead of the pack

Lauren Sneath

Friday 14 July 2023 09:27

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Mercedes technical director James Allison has said the team has a chance of winning the upgrade race between themselves, Aston Martin, Ferrari and McLaren as each team attempts to improve their car to match the dominant Red Bull.

In the battle of the upgrades, McLaren have made a surprise entry as the British team saw a huge boost at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. Lando Norris came second in the race, ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes.

In a video on the Mercedes team’s YouTube channel, Allison discussed the team’s performance at Silverstone and what they have learned for the rest of the season.

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Asked in a fan question if Mercedes has a chance to establish a lead in the closely fought upgrade race, Allison said: “Well, the simple answer is yes. We're only just around about halfway through the season and there's still plenty more development to come in these cars."

James Allison and Toto Wolff are attempting to help Mercedes ahead of their competitors

He added: “All of the teams will of course be turning their attention to next year and that will sort of just de-fang all of us a little bit in terms of the rate at which we can improve our cars, but for each of us and for us absolutely, there are improvements that we would like to make on the current car that we know will also carry into next year.

“So it doesn't feel like sort of throwing good money after bad, it feels like you're investing in both seasons with those upgrades.

“So for us, yes, you'll see the upgrades coming for a little while longer, I suspect for the others too and what you will get in these next sequence of races is a little bit of yo-yoing for position in a very closely packed bunch as upgrades sort of make the difference for one team for a while until someone else will come out of sequence with another upgrade a race or two later to sort of even things back up.”

Allison: Well worth us paying attention to McLaren

Allison said that in the final stages of the season, the team hopes to have a lead. He said Mercedes will try to ‘figure out what changes from race to race’ in order to improve their cars, in particular noting the progress of McLaren.

He added: “An unusual thing about the McLaren upgrade is its lap time effect is really quite strong.

“It's pretty unusual to have a step of that size of relative competitiveness in the middle of a season and you know [hats off] to them, they've done a a really good piece of work there.

“But that is also makes it interesting for us because we have the before and after shots, and we know the lap time effect was big.

“So [it’s] well worth us paying more attention than we normally might to a team’s or another competitor team’s upgrades, because in this case we know that whatever changed has made a really meaningful difference to their lap time. So [it’s] quite useful for us to know what that was and see whether it can play into our own thoughts about developing our own car.”