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Mercedes technical director James Allison is not confident in the team's ability to replicate its success in Barcelona at the 2023 F1 Canadian GP as the nature of the two tracks are very different.
The Silver Arrows got off to a bad start to the season in Bahrain, where their car was arguably the slowest among the top four teams.
Mercedes have bounced back since with races like the one in Melbourne, where George Russell secured a front-row start and Lewis Hamilton secured P2.
The real change, however, came with the team's major upgrade in Monaco. The upgrade came to full effect in Barcelona, a track that had plenty of fast-speed corners.
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As a result, the race saw the Mercedes drivers carve their way through the field to secure a P2 and P3 finish. Mercedes was easily the second-fastest car on the grid and blew away the threat of Aston Martin and Ferrari.
Moving to Canada, however, the team doesn't expect the same results because the track is entirely different. Compared to Barcelona, which had plenty of fast corners, the track in Canada has a lot of slow sections.
According to James Allison, that is something the team still needs to perfect, and hence a decent weekend in Canada would be a positive for the team. He told F1TV:
"This track is very much a different set of challenges. So if we can wiggle our way through this weekend with okay performance, then that will be a good feeling. I tend to think that most of what we did was sort of medium and high-speed gains."
He added:
"There’s not a lot of medium and high-speed here, so I think we’ll perhaps not be as strong here as we were in Barcelona, and it’s still for us to make a sort of matching set of gains in the low-speed stuff a little bit later in the year."
Mercedes 'plotting and scheming' over what it could bring next to the car
James Allison has re-joined Mercedes in the technical director role after a break, where he focused on different endeavors. Allison served as the technical director from 2017 to 2021 before taking on the broader chief technical officer role.
With Mercedes struggling at the start of the season, Allison was brought back in place of Mike Elliott - who initially replaced him as technical director - in April.
On his plans to get the team back to the top of the grid, Allison said that he and his colleagues were "plotting and scheming" potential future upgrades for the car.
He said:
“Well I’m certainly enjoying it. I think it might be a bit grandiose to say I’m putting [plans] in place. I’m just tucked in with my colleagues plotting and scheming what we’re bringing for the tracks this year, and also similarly what we what we’re trying to do for next year."
He added:
“We just had the main press conference and I was trying to express what an actual thrill that is, when you’ve got a little bit of a picture forming internally in the team with all your fellow engineers of how that journey is going to look. It’s just a bit like waiting for Christmas. You can’t wait for it to arrive, and it’s very exciting.”
A podium in Canada would be a massive result for the team. It remains to be seen however what the car can truly deliver on track.
