The W14 car, which was planned to be the 2022 successor of another car called porpoising, didn’t go so well at the beginning. This made people speculate that Allison has come back from his higher role in Brackley and is taking a more active part in the design process. Allison had teamed up with Mercedes in 2017 and after 4 years in the design department, he moved above it and became Chief Technical Officer.
Recently, Mr. Allison changed his job, which split his time between different projects. One of them includes being a part-owner in the America’s Cup sailing competition. Although the team that he’s involved with has not been doing well lately, he is still not actively participating in making W14 better. Mr. Wolff (a different person) told F1Flow.com that Mr. Allison is not really involved when asked about it.
“He’s part of the long-term plan of the team and doing activities like America’s Cup.”
When it was suggested that someone might join to replace Allison, Wolff said: “It takes more than one person in an organization. But you need to find people who are good for this specific job. Sometimes a person is really great at one thing, but not at everything.”
James Allison is a Technical Director at Mercedes AMG and he’s super talented. Even though there have been lots of changes in the technical team, James remains really important for the team’s success.
Two important people who used to work for Mercedes left. Paddy Lowe went to work for Williams and Eric Blandin switched to the successful Aston Martin in 2021. Similarly, Aldo Costa who was an engineering director (later became a team advisor) left Mercedes and became the head of technical department at Dallara in 2020. When asked about how difficult it is to replace these staff, Wolff said that you can never totally replace them like Aldo.
“Aldo was very smart in setting up his plan when he decided to move on. It didn’t happen suddenly, because we had over two years of preparation. He made sure his department would be just how he wanted it before he left.”
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