In the round-up: Mercedes technical director James Allison says the 2024 season is not one he wants to repeat.
In brief
Allison rues “lost opportunity” for Mercedes
Mercedes won four races this year – three more than the last two seasons combined – but that extra success didn’t make the championship more enjoyable for Allison. “The year is not one I would wish to repeat,” he said in a video released by the team. “It’s been emotionally tough.”
The team began the season in poor shape, won three races in the middle of the year, then took a final victory in Las Vegas last month. “It’s been a right old roller coaster of extreme disappointment at the start of the year, followed by a sense of recovery, then a bit of malaise and some more flashes,” said Allison.
“The overall sense in the team is one of lost opportunity. We have not hit the benchmarks we would have wished to. Watching other people earn and win championships while we’re spectators is no fun at all. So it’s been a tough year.
“But that is, I think, one of the best bits of F1. It is so fiercely difficult. It is so hard to get everything right. Those that do have properly earned it and you can but doff your cap to them because they deserve it. So when I saw the smiles on the McLaren guys this weekend, I thought, well, they’ve earned that and I know what it feels like and I envy them for it, but they’ve earned it. And it just fills you with the desire to experience that again yourself and for our team.”
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Links
F1's next female driver will need time to get there, says Pulling (Reuters)
'A 16-year-old girl wouldn't be strong enough to drive a Formula 2 car. That's the harsh reality. (For) a more mature, more developed female build it will be more possible to drive that car and fight for an opportunity to get to Formula 1. When, not if, we see a woman in Formula 1, it will be older - mid-20s, I would say.'
Michelin extends FIA WEC Hypercar commitment until at least 2029 (WEC)
'Michelin will remain the exclusive tyre partner to the FIA World Endurance Championship’s headlining Hypercar class until at least 2029, underscoring the series’ current growth and stability.'
Getting to know Freddie Slater: fiercely competitive, focused and fast (Formula Scout)
'Rosin highlights Slater’s ability to nail qualifying: 'When he has had a difficult quali, for example for traffic or, because with 15-minute quali in F4, you can have a full course yellow or red flag, he’s always been able to bounce back in the second quali to be a protagonist.''
'It doesn’t always turn out that well for his subjects, says Kapadia. He’s thinking of Ayrton Senna, killed in a horror crash, Amy Winehouse, destroyed by drugs and alcohol, Ghost, who’s detained and interrogated. But what he’s suggesting in 2073, is that it’s almost too late – but not quite – for the rest of us too.'
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Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
NEWS: @ArrowMcLaren says due to “logistical challenges” that couldn’t be worked through, @PatricioOWard won’t take part in an exhibition at next month’s @FIAFormulaE race in Mexico City.
Plans had been for O’Ward to demo both an Indy car & a Formula E car in his native country.
— Nathan Brown (@By_NathanBrown) December 15, 2024
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Comment of the day
We had many great suggestions for last weekend’s Sergio Perez Caption Competition, and our winner is:
Don’t drink and drive. Fortunately, that won’t be an issue for me next year.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
It was very tempting to give this one to Notagrumpyfan, and we also received great suggestions from WimB, Coventry Climax, Biggsy, Constantijn Blondel and Philip, plus a truly dad-joke-grade pun by Cyberaxiom…
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Johnny86, Ovviamente, Matthew Nowell, Kiefer Hopkins, R.J. O’Connell and Godwin Joseph!
SPArtacus
16th December 2024, 0:32
What a surprise! Does anyone expect any senior Mercedes boss to ever say they were satisfied with a season in which they weren’t challenging for a title? No. And they’d be fired if they did.
SPArtacus
16th December 2024, 3:58
Oh, wow. Thanks for clearing that up!
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
16th December 2024, 1:54
In my opinion, that is the funniest caption competition winner of the year- Congrats Keith Campbell (@keithedin)!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th December 2024, 3:18
Ahah, that’s good indeed! He realised himself he’s not gonna drive with such abysmal performances, even with a contract.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
16th December 2024, 13:01
@ferrox-glideh Thank you so much. Glad some other people enjoyed it too.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
16th December 2024, 3:18
Surprised mercedes didn’t even say anything nice about winning 4 races, that’s not few and only slightly less than ferrari and mclaren got, in such a meh season for merc.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
16th December 2024, 3:39
If Lauda was around, he would have said something nice, I like to think.
By the way Esploratore, I always regard your contributions to this space as a big positive. I hope I haven’t cheapened this space for you with my minor conflicts with others.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
16th December 2024, 3:54
I almost wrote “if Michael was around”, but it nearly broke me.
fawkes
16th December 2024, 3:59
F2 cars don’t have power steering? If they do have, then why can’t teenage girls training hard for it couldn’t run them properly? I mean take a look at the young girls fighting in UFC. They’re tough as hell.
MichaelN
16th December 2024, 19:51
They don’t, but the new car has had changes made to make the cars easier to drive. They tested it with Tatiana Calderon in 2023 and she gave feedback on various suspension and steering geometries. Doriane Pin tested similar things in the Formula Regional. Corrado Casiraghi said they’re working with 20Nm of steering torque for F4 and about 30-35NM in F2.
Of course these aren’t static values, as it depends on many factors. But I’m assuming Casiraghi is talking about averages (not peak values in the middle of a high speed corner).
But that’s still significantly more than you’d get in cars with power steering; I think I’ve seen it mentioned that GT3 cars in the WEC are around 11 Nm. Still nothing like your road car, but much more comfortable than the single seaters.
Dave (@davea86)
16th December 2024, 4:53
Is four wins the record for a team that finished fourth in the constructors championship? I checked the last 10 seasons and most teams finishing outside the top three go winless.
MG1982 (@mg1982)
16th December 2024, 7:30
Most likely. I just know for sure that Lotus won 1 race in 2012 and 1 race in 2013, and finished 4th in the WCC in both years.
anon
16th December 2024, 9:04
@davea86 I believe it is – there are at least four seasons where teams finished in 4th place in the WCC with three wins (Wolf Racing in 1977, Renault in 1980, Lotus in 1985 and McLaren in 1997) but, as far as I can tell, none with 4 victories.
notagrumpyfan
16th December 2024, 10:38
But of course we had 2007 where a team with (more than) four wins was ‘ finishing outside the top three’. ;)
Craig
16th December 2024, 9:22
I think it underlines how their season has been, mostly loitering around 6-8th, a couple truly atrocious races mix with some extreme highlights
Jere (@jerejj)
16th December 2024, 6:27
Still ‘if’ before ‘when’ regarding a female driver competing in F1.
Craig
16th December 2024, 10:16
I still lean towards “when” rather then “if”, but will grant only the most highly trained 16 year old girls with the right physique are likely to be able to handle a full race in an F2 car without issue. To be fair the same applies to boys, but there’s generally more boys physically capable of it then girls.
anon
16th December 2024, 17:55
Craig, that said, in some ways the debate is a bit irrelevant though – you aren’t allowed into Formula 2 unless you are at least 17 years old, so a 16 year old male is not going to be driving a Formula 2 car either.
Dominique (@tryneplague)
16th December 2024, 13:09
The questions and answers most of the time ignore the real roots of this “problem”, which in reality isn’t really one. It’s simply the result of our cultural habits. The ratio of females vs males going into karting is totally unbalanced. Probably something like 1:9 or even lower… Why do we instinctively buy toy cars and video games for boys and barbies and clothing/jewelry for girls.. the path is already laid out before they can even talk. Some boys will play with barbies. Some girls will play with toy cars. But they’re an exception. Then check the number of males advancing from karting to higher series, and then even higher and so on until F1. It’s already incredibly difficult for a male to get to any formula series.
The chances are there for females. They are simply so slim that they look nearly impossible. Not a single team would deny a female driver if that driver was good enough to compete against the rest of the field.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
17th December 2024, 12:49
I would say some people do that, not everyone. If I’m buying a present for a child I try to find out what they’re likely to want rather than risk upsetting them!
Dominique (@tryneplague)
17th December 2024, 18:00
And that’s very sensible but far from being true for the majority. I don’t have children, but I know how it was for me and my sister in the 80’s and early 90’s when I was young. And all my cousins and friends. Times change though, maybe we’ll get there sooner than later :)
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
16th December 2024, 9:48
I really don’t have any confidence that Mercedes year will be any better next season. They just don’t seem to make any solid forward progress.
Lots of “we understand where the problem is” type statements, but each time they say that there seems to be another issue surface.
Unless they’ve found something fundamental with the chassis that couldn’t be fixed during the season, I can see 2025 being another rinse and repeat from them.
rprp
16th December 2024, 11:46
You say that, but clearly there is progress. 2022, 1 win. 2023, 0 wins (in a season utterly dominated by one car, and not being far off a win in the only race where that one car was off colour). 2024, 4 wins.
As for 2025, I’d agree. I expect Mercedes are throwing all their eggs into the 2026 basket.
anon
16th December 2024, 13:19
I think that does highlight the issues that poster has brought up though, which is that the peaks in performance may have been higher, but the team also had some rather poor races that offset that.
Their points and WCC ranking reflects that, as whilst they scored more points this season than in 2023, they ended up dropping from 2nd to 4th in the championship. In terms of consistently competing for wins, they are still some way off – they were competitive in certain conditions, but weren’t consistently competitive across the wider range of circuits and conditions seen across the calendar.