Mercedes insist: 'Poorer performance not just because of sidepods'

Mercedes were blamed for sticking too long to the car concept chosen in 2022. The sidepods in particular were repeatedly pointed to as proof that the Germans just didn't want to get it. However, James Allison, Mercedes' technical director, disagrees.

In 2022, Mercedes' car immediately stood out at the winter test. The car had hardly any sidepods. The so-called 'zeropod concept' was initially feared. Had Mercedes found something special again? It turned out not to be the case. Mercedes' car came to one win in 2022 and an evolution of that car in 2023 did not win a Grand Prix at all.

What went wrong at Mercedes

Toto Wolff calls it his biggest mistake: that the team did not say goodbye to its chosen development path at the end of 2022 earlier. George Russell 's victory in Brazil gave Mercedes faith that there was more potential after all. This turned out to be a miss. Yet Allison does not want to put the blame solely on the sidepods.

''We definitely took a path with our car, and I would say that's from the tip of the nose to the very back of the tail, which was not a competitive one. The most visually notable aspect of that was our sidepods, but by no means the definitive factor. It was not right from front to back and that's the thing we have had to learn and have had to deal with - that's taken us longer than we would have like,'' Allison told Sky Sports.

Allison was reinstated as technical director in 2023, having taken on other projects as chief technical officer. Mike Elliott took the opposite route, but eventually decided to part ways with Mercedes after that 'demotion'. Full technical responsibility is therefore back in Allison's hands.