Mercedes ‘plotting and scheming’, anticipating results ‘like waiting for Christmas’

Mercedes technical director James Allison has said he is “plotting and scheming” for the future upon his return to the role.

Allison moved back to lead the technical operation of the Formula 1 side of Mercedes after a job swap with Mike Elliott earlier in the season, and he said he is in the process of working out the team’s steps for this season and next.

Lewis Hamilton said in Canada that Mercedes now know where their “North Star” is in terms of car development and how they aim to chase it, with several significant changes having already been made to the W14 this season.

Allison spoke in a buoyant mood while doing the media rounds as the team’s representative in Montreal this weekend, about the “thrill” he is experiencing of what might be next for Mercedes in the future.

“Well I’m certainly enjoying it,” Allison told F1 TV when asked about his return to the technical director role.

“I think it might be a bit grandiose to say I’m putting [plans] in place. I’m just tucked in with my colleagues plotting and scheming what we’re bringing for the tracks this year, and also similarly what we what we’re trying to do for next year.

“We just had the main press conference and I was trying to express what an actual thrill that is, when you’ve got a little bit of a picture forming internally in the team with all your fellow engineers of how that journey is going to look.

“It’s just a bit like waiting for Christmas. You can’t wait for it to arrive, and it’s very exciting.”

PlanetF1.com recommends

Canadian GP FP2: Lewis Hamilton heads Mercedes 1-2 in tight-fought session

George Russell shares worrying crash prediction ahead of crunch F1 vote

Mercedes leapfrogged Aston Martin into second place in the Constructors’ Championship after a double podium finish at the Spanish Grand Prix a fortnight ago, and Lewis Hamilton and George Russell topped the timesheets in FP2 on Friday in Montreal.

Having introduced a large upgrade package in Monaco and seen big improvements in Barcelona, Allison explained why he is not quite as confident for Mercedes’ chances heading into the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.

“This track is very much a different set of challenges,” he said.

“So if we can wiggle our way through this weekend with okay performance, then that will be a good feeling.

“I tend to think that most of what we did was sort of medium and high-speed gains. There’s not a lot of medium and high-speed here, so I think we’ll perhaps not be as strong here as we were in Barcelona, and it’s still for us to make a sort of matching set of gains in the low-speed stuff a little bit later in the year.”