Mercedes W15 ‘million-dollar question’ answered as Allison airs ‘too far’ theory

The inconsistent performance of the Mercedes W15 at the United States Grand Prix was likely caused by the team “flirting a bit too closely to with the ground.”

That is the theory of Mercedes technical director James Allison, who believes the team “pushed it too far” at the Circuit of The Americas as both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton made sizeable mistakes.

Mercedes W15 ‘too close to the ground’ after George Russell, Lewis Hamilton spins

Mercedes appeared to be contenders in Austin, Texas, after Russell fell just 0.012 seconds short of setting pole position for the sprint race.

However, the team failed to hit those heights again for the remainder of the weekend as Russell crashed in the closing moments of qualifying the following day after Hamilton could only manage 19th, his worst qualifying result since the 2017 Brazilian Grand Prix.

Hamilton spun into retirement at the same corner Russell went off on the second lap of the race, though Russell showed strong pace by recovering from a pit-lane start to finish sixth.

Lewis Hamilton vs George Russell: Mercedes head-to-head stats for F1 2024

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Appearing on Mercedes’ post-race Debrief show, Allison claimed Mercedes were likely too ambitious with setup in Austin with the move to run the car too close to the ground inducing some “fairly unpleasant” characteristics.

Asked why Mercedes were unable to sustain their strong sprint qualifying pace over the rest of the weekend, he said: “That is the million-dollar question.

“Not only did George nearly secure the pole in that session, Lewis nearly smashed it utterly out the park – he was way ahead of any of the times until he got a bit tangled up with [Franco] Colapinto.

“In terms of why that did not materialise in the rest of the weekend, that is the key question for us.

“My guess is that we were flirting a bit too closely with the ground.

“These cars like running low and you generally pick up lap time as you’re able to get the car nearer to the ground, but push it too far and the car starts behaving in a fairly unpleasant fashion.

“If you just hit a bump wrong, it’ll unseat the car, make the rear end come out on you and and just deliver a level of performance that when it’s good, it’s great, but if you just hit a bump at the wrong moment, a crosswind at the wrong time, then you get punished for it.

“And my guess is that we were just pushing our luck a little bit too much in terms of how near to the ground we got, how stiff we ran it.”

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com following his retirement in Texas, Hamilton claimed the car “started bouncing” just before he suffered his off at Turn 19.

He said: “I had a great start, was feeling good and got up to 12th.

“I wasn’t even pushing at that point; I was literally just trying to get going and bringing the tyres up to temperature.

“The car started bouncing. The left front started bouncing, and the rear end just came around, the same as George [in qualifying].”

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes boss, absolved Hamilton of any blame in the incident after the race, telling Sky F1: “One-hundred per cent car. He was not even pushing at that stage.

“We saw it with George on Saturday, perhaps that was maybe over-pushing it, but still abrupt losing it and putting it in the wall.

“Today, there was wind and a bit of dirty air from the car in front. We definitely have an issue. I don’t know if yesterday was the same.

“Lewis Hamilton doesn’t lose the car on lap [two] like this.”

Read next: Why Lando Norris must harness his inner Max Verstappen to actually beat him