Allison: 'All the teams are looking jealously at our driver pair'

The 2023 Formula 1 season did not start well at all for Mercedes. Gradually, the W14 improved for George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes man James Allison looks back on the eventful year for Toto Wolff's team.

After a Mercedes comeback, the battle with Ferrari was fought for P2 in the constructors' championship. Red Bull Racing was already far out of sight, as the Austrian racing team became champions in Japan, in front of their own Honda family. At the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Mercedes manage to score enough points to keep Ferrari behind in the Championship.

Allison happy with P2 Mercedes

"P2 was the absolute upper bound of what the team could achieve," Allison opened, looking back at Mercedes' 2023 season. "We did a good job to get there. That does actually feel surprisingly good, albeit slightly in conflict with our desire to be unequivocally the best team," the Brit explained.

"The team itself full of very strong engineers, an operation that would be the envy of many, notwithstanding a few mistakes that we made here and there during the year, and a driver lineup that I think all teams would look at with an envious eye. We've got in one of our drivers, arguably the most successful person who's ever sat behind the wheel of a racing car. And in the other one, a very, very promising younger man in George Russell. We're a very fortunate team. We need to make that good fortune count next year and hopefully take it one better than P2," concluded the Brit.