The senior technical staff at Mercedes switch roles: we analyze the restructuring of the former Formula 1 top team.
James Allison and Mike Elliott are swapping positions as senior engineers at Mercedes Formula 1 team. “Motorsport-Total.com” reported this exclusively a few days ago. But what exactly does this personal castling mean? And what does Mercedes hope to do with bringing Allison back into day-to-day business and Elliott transferring to a higher-level role?
First of all, it must be said that Mercedes is in a completely new situation for the team. After years of dominance, it is now difficult for the German-British racing team in Formula 1 for the second year. Because Mercedes is further behind Red Bull and is forced to catch up.
And so, after a few races in the 2023 season, the team felt it was necessary to draw personnel consequences – although team boss Toto Wolff had asserted a few days earlier that Allison, as the person responsible for technical matters at Mercedes, was not working more intensively on the Formula 1 project than before .
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff: Elliott initiates restructuring
Now, Wolff says Elliott initiated the change. Because Elliott had the feeling that Allison was like a “gladiator for whom our troops go through fire,” Wolff put it in an exclusive interview with the global version of “Motorsport.com”.
So what to think of the Mercedes news? On the one hand, the team is apparently intent on emphasizing the community and mutual support in the racing team. On the other hand, Mercedes must of course also aim to improve its sporting prospects in Formula 1 competition.
However, we don’t know how Elliott came to his realization. Was it because of the ever-increasing internal pressure? After all, Mercedes wanted to reconnect with the top with the W14 project in the 2023 season, after being completely without a title in 2022 for the first time since 2013.
Now Mercedes has to emulate Red Bull
Of course: The new Formula 1 rules introduced for the 2022 season were both a risk and an opportunity for the teams. You could implement the changes well or react less successfully to the new regulations. Red Bull did the first, Mercedes did the second.
In short: Red Bull got off to a better start in the new Formula 1 era with its aerodynamic concept. The combination of suspension and undercarriage on the RB18 and also on the RB19 is considered industry-leading. This is also confirmed by the fact that Aston Martin has made a huge leap into the 2023 season because it has quickly embraced the trends set by Red Bull.
Ferrari and Mercedes, on the other hand, have stuck to their own aerodynamic ideas for the 2023 season. It wasn’t without risk, but it’s now increasing the pressure on both teams, not to mention the internal level of frustration.
In the case of Mercedes, this is now resulting in the concept change already announced in Bahrain and in the now confirmed personnel reshuffle.
Why Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff’s choice of words is so interesting
What is interesting about the realignment of the technical departments under Allison and Elliott is the choice of words. Wolff emphasized that the personal rochade in the Mercedes team was “made very much by Mike Elliott”, possibly as a reaction to the lack of success under him as technical director.
Mattia Binotto and James Key fared differently at Ferrari and McLaren respectively: They are no longer employed by the teams mentioned. Wolff, however, continues to cling to Elliott.
What’s more, with Elliott’s appointment as the overall technical manager, Mercedes shows that it still has a lot of confidence in Elliott.
In the future, Elliott will take care of the further development of the star brand’s Formula 1 project on a larger scale. Allison, in turn, returns to day-to-day business with the clear task of making the current W14 and its successor, the W15, the winning cars for 2024.
Mercedes is making more changes to its team structure
But there is much more to Wolff’s statements about the new personnel structure at Mercedes, namely the enormous influence of the financial regulations with the budget ceiling on the procedures of a Formula 1 team.
Under the new conditions, chief designer John Owen has become an “administrator of the budget cap”, said Wolff. Owen had to take on “a lot” of additional tasks after 2021.
Mercedes has responded by allowing Owen’s deputy, Giacomo Tortora, to be more involved in financial planning, leaving Owen’s head and hands free for car design.
And that’s reminiscent of the Mercedes lineup from a few years ago, when Aldo Costa worked alongside Owen and Allison.
Mercedes has coped with previous staff departures, but…
However, Costa is one of the important people who are now gone. Because of course there have been various additions and departures at Mercedes over the years. Allison’s predecessor as technical director, Paddy Lowe, joined Williams in 2017. However, the Mercedes team continued to drive in the fast lane.
Now the signs are completely different. It’s also no coincidence that Aston Martin is doing so well, given that the team has signed former Red Bull head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows and Eric Blandin, a former Mercedes aerodynamicist who is now deputy chief engineer.
So you could say: Although Mercedes has currently only reshuffled its top executives, the team is less strong overall than in the past.
And that puts the latest developments more in the limelight because Mercedes, under the pressure of the lack of success, has shifted responsibilities in the team back to Allison.
Actually, Mercedes technical director Allison had completely different plans
At this point, let’s not forget what Allison really had in mind in 2021 when he gave up the role of Technical Director at Mercedes. He wanted to “sit on the sofa and cheer on the team from afar,” he said at the time.
Mercedes team boss Wolff then created the role of technical director with overall responsibility in order to keep Allison in the racing team at least part-time.
This move now appears to be paying off. Because with Allison, Mercedes has a capable technical director who can try to turn the sporting situation around.
On the other hand, this step also proves that the second change of technical director – from Allison to Elliott – under Wolff as team boss did not work. The switch back to Allison should bring Mercedes back on the road to success.
What distinguishes Mercedes technical director Allison
And Allison is popular and appreciated in the Mercedes team, he’s also well received by the fans. This compensates, for example, for the departure of chief strategist James Vowles, who now acts as team boss at Williams.
Allison also has an impressive Formula 1 résumé: he was Aerodynamics Director at Benetton as the team of Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn went from strength to strength.
Then Allison followed the “dream team” to Ferrari and actively helped shape the “golden years” of the traditional team before moving to Renault in 2005, where he won two more world championship titles with Fernando Alonso.
In 2013 Allison returned to Ferrari, first as Head of Chassis and later as Technical Director. However, this second Ferrari time did not lead to further successes: Allison was less involved in the technical day-to-day business and on top of that had to cope with the death of his wife in 2016. He then left Ferrari and went home to England.
Even with Allison as head of technology, Mercedes will not have immediate success
Then the surprise: Allison made a Formula 1 comeback, but not at Renault, as many had suspected, but at Mercedes. He started there in 2017 as Technical Director.
But the fact that he is now back in the same role does not necessarily mean that Mercedes will immediately win again. It’s now Allison’s job to solidify the team’s changed structure and put Red Bull under technical pressure by adopting the concept Red Bull once introduced for his team.
The latter is a completely normal procedure in Formula 1 as part of the new rules. What is more surprising is how much pressure there was at Mercedes after the team let two comparatively weak cars roll out of the garages in a row. Such a reaction with the staff shifting at the head of the technical department was not foreseeable.
And so Mercedes is now writing a new chapter under Allison’s responsibility on the technical side. Despite everything, it is possible that the team will no longer be able to build on its earlier successes.
The next Mercedes chapter: Hamilton is optimistic
But perhaps the years 2022 and 2023 will only prove to be a small “time out” between two very successful phases for Mercedes. The time will tell.
In any case, star Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton is in good spirits. Even before the personnel restructuring, the seven-time Formula 1 world champion had emphasized: “We are still a team that has won titles. Our great people have accompanied us on this path.”
“But: We are accountable to each other. Every single one of us has to question ourselves and our actions and think about how we can get even better. There is not a single person in the team who believes that we are doing everything right and that it can’t be better everyone is focused on how we can move forward together.”
“It’s incredibly important to me,” says Hamilton. “Because if you’re stuck in structures in which nothing changes, then it’s still the case that you don’t do a trick in sport. But the people in our team have a very open attitude. This courage is inspiring. And that’s why I know: We will make it.”