Mercedes F1 team technical director James Allison recently said the team is keeping a keen eye on McLaren upgrades after a shocker in the British GP. At the start of this season, McLaren was arguably the slowest of the lot. For the initial few races, the duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri could barely manage a handful of points. Even more, disappointing was an array of 5 races this season where the team went point-less.
However, the Woking-based men turned things around in the Silverstone GP, and for good this time. Lando Norris qualified in P2 and Oscar closely followed him in P3. The race went exceptional for the papaya team as Norris was able to hold onto his original position and landed on a podium. What was most interesting was that the young Brit was able to fend off the W-14 of Lewis Hamilton in the final phases of the races.
Hamilton, who was on soft compound Pirelli could not overtake fellow Brit even after giving it everything. It was a battle to cherish between two high-quality drivers. However, particularly impressive was the cracker lap time and fast corner speed of Mclaren. At the same time, the Silver Arrows team has been struggling through its development process. Technical director James Allison recently talked about the way ahead for the team.
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Mercedes director termed McLaren’s upgrade as “Unusual”
In a recent interview reported by the F1 website Autosport, Allison talked about the team’s approach this season so far. The Silver Arrows director said the team is following up on the upgrades of their competitors to get a better idea of the development process. After the cracker of a performance at the British GP, the team is keener on McLaren updates, which Allison termed as “unusual”.
“We keep an eye on all the teams as they upgrade. We take lots of photos and we try and figure out what changes from race to race. Also, we note when something new or unusual comes along and the interesting and unusual thing about the McLaren upgrade is that its lap time effect is quite strong. It’s unusual to have a step of that size of relative competitiveness in the middle of a season and chapeau to them,” said Allison.
“They’ve done a good piece of work there, but that also makes it interesting for us because we have the before and after shots and we know the lap time effect was big. So, it’s well worth us paying more attention than we normally might to another competitor team’s upgrade because in this case, we know that whatever changed has made a meaningful difference to their lap time,” added the director.
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