25/01/2022
NEWS STORY
Mercedes chief technical officer, James Allison warns that some teams may get the 2022 rules overhaul disastrously wrong and consequently face a "terribly painful year".
The German team, which won a record eighth successive constructors' title last season, heads into 2022 as favourite once again, those betting sites with offers quoting odds of between 4/9 and 8/15.
"Everyone in our team, and everyone in every other team, will have done our level best to try to find a design and an approach that will be a happy match to this new regulation set," says the highly respected Briton, in a Mercedes video looking ahead to the new season and the impact of the rules overhaul.
"We'll all get to find out together at the start of this season, in the races that unfold from there, exactly how that shakes out," he continues.
"I would imagine, given that the cars are so new and so different, that one or two cars on the grid will have got it really badly wrong," he warns. "And they will have a terribly painful year.
"I would imagine that all of us to some degree will have will have left things on the table that we just didn't anticipate," he admits. "And we will look at other cars and think 'oh, why didn't we think of that?' Then we'll be scrambling around to try to get that idea onto our car as fast as possible, so that we can claw our way, from whatever position we land in that first race, forwards. Or, if we're lucky enough to be in front, to keep the attacking wolves behind us."
His comments come days after Ross Brawn, the man behind the rules overhaul, said that he didn't expect any of the teams to come up with a ground-breaking idea similar to his own double diffuser of 2009.
"It's going to be quite a rush," says Allison, "and definitely something that's going to keep us all from having too much sleep for the whole of the season."
That said, he admits the rule change, big as it is, provides an exciting challenge for him and his colleagues.
"When the regulations change in such large measure as these ones, then we approach that with all the fun and relish that that challenge deserves. Our job is to look for technical opportunity and regulations, and then use our combined wit and skill and all the effort that we make collectively, to try to find a configuration of car that will be better than anyone else's approach to it.
"When everything is as new as this, then everywhere you look in that regulation set, which is twice as thick as the old one, there's opportunity.
"There's opportunity. And of course, there's jeopardy, and we try to pick our way through the potential minefield and pick up all the little boxes of treasure that may be set in amongst the landmines, to end up with a car that we hope will see us pitching at the front of the grid."