Why Ferrari, not McLaren, has Mercedes worried in championship threat

Mercedes’ James Allison believes it’s Ferrari, not McLaren, that has been able to claw back performance against his team since the season started.

McLaren appeared to be the team most capable of fighting Mercedes, particularly based on Oscar Piastri’s performance at Suzuka, but James Allison has hinted it’s the Scuderia that has caught the eye of Brackley.

James Allison explains why Ferrari has closed on Mercedes

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Mercedes has controlled the championship since the start of the season, with Russell having won in Australia before Antonelli embarked on a five-race winning streak that was ended by Lewis Hamilton at the Barcelona Grand Prix as Ferrari became the first team to defeat Mercedes in a straight fight.

Hamilton’s win came following Ferrari’s rollout of a significant aero upgrade package, which included an all-new front wing, floor, diffuser and more, with the package aimed at improving airflow, wake control, and adding downforce.

Antonelli now enjoys a 41-point lead over Hamilton in the Drivers’ Championship, while Mercedes has a 72-point lead over Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship.

Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have scored podiums but, aside from Piastri’s run to second-place at Suzuka – a race he might have won had it not been for an unfortunately timed Safety Car – the Woking-based squad is yet to compete for an outright victory as it seeks to defend its Constructors’ Championship crown.

With the complexion of the championship starting to take shape, Allison was asked whether he believes there has been a resurgence of McLaren and Ferrari to make it a multi-team battle this season, and he explained that the low-hanging fruit available under the new regulations means the picture can change very quickly.

“I’m not certain that McLaren has resurged,” Allison suggested.

“Ferrari, on the other hand, did bring quite a significant upgrade to this race, and I think what you’re seeing mostly there is these are very young rules, and our car was launched with a bit of a head start 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 means it is relatively easy at the moment, because the rules are not yet as explored as they might be, to find performance.

“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 brings an upgrade package to a race, unanswered by one of our own, then it will close the gap that previously felt comfortable, and 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, and, 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 reestablish 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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While Allison’s focus is on the chassis side of the equation, there is an extra weapon at Ferrari’s disposal, and that is the fact that the Scuderia has been granted two ADUO homologation upgrade opportunities, based on the performance indexing of its internal combustion engine.

The first of these could come as soon as next weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, and could see Ferrari close the engine performance gap on Mercedes – the Brixworth-based manufacturer having been granted one such update this season.

Having an upgrade ready to go at such short notice after the FIA communicated to the power unit manufacturers its findings suggests Ferrari has planned its development plan around being awarded an ADUO permission; given the relative performance differences between the two teams, a closing of the gap in the power unit performance could make the title fight intriguing as the season progresses.

Looking back over the first few months of what has been a stop-start championship, with long breaks created by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, Allison said there has been some satisfaction for Mercedes to take from the first seven races of the season, but the job is far from complete.

“It’s a promising start to a thing that feels like it’s barely begun,” he said.

“It’s going to finish in December, and we’re a long, long way away from that: we’re a third of the way through, or something like that, so it’s a promising start, but nothing that you could ever feel like the job is done.

“The rules are so young that it is extremely easy to make the cars quicker at the moment. Any team that ignores that will just go backwards very, very fast.

“So our job is to make sure that we, we keep making the car quicker with the engineering improvements, that the drivers keep wringing its neck and getting the very most from it, and we just eliminate any of the reliability woes that have taken quite a few points from our ledger so far this season, so that we can then hopefully show up at each race, and then in the remainder of the season, and put on a good show.”

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