Even Red Bull 'Won't Be Sleeping Easy' Says Mercedes Technical Director

Friday, 19 January 2024 at 17:00

Mercedes's technical director, James Allison, who recently prolonged his contract with the team, asserted the team cannot be confident enough at this part of the year.

With 43 days to go until the first race of the season and less than a month to go until the car launches of every single team, everyone is mostly finished with the car that will run the pre-season tests and the first race in Bahrain.

At this point, there is not much progress to make, and every F1 team waits with great anticipation to see how big of progress they really made in comparison to their rivals.

Aston Martin's team principal said he now constantly asks himself whether his team has done enough in this period. Mercedes's technical director suggested something similar when speaking to motorspot.com:

"It's impossible at this time of year to be anything other than apprehensive, coupled with excited, coupled with frightened."

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A team that should be the most confident is Red Bull Racing because they went into the break with quite a headstart over their rivals. However, Allison says even Red Bull will be biting their nails before the first race of the season.

"Those are always the emotions that you feel, and I would imagine that even in Red Bull, after a year of such good performance, they will not be sleeping easy in their beds either because no one knows what everyone else will deliver."

Mercedes made major changes to their cars, and it remains a question how big of an effect these will have on overall performance. The technical director added:

"We hope we've done a good job with the new car, and we hope we've addressed some of the shortcomings that were so publicly on display with it last year."

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