I would say, well I don’t need to guess about this because Lewis was absolutely explicit about it afterwards, he said he really wished he had taken the same approach that George had taken which was in his first run in Q1, George fueled to do two timed laps so that he could have a feel of the car in the first flying lap, do a cool down lap and then have another bite at the cherry which would just give him more of a feel for the car.

Whereas Lewis went later in the session, one timed lap, one timed lap and Lewis was very clear afterwards that he needed another lap. He’d found that the changes he’d made had made the car more understeery, they’d made it easier for the car to lock up under the braking and he was just pinching those front brakes in a way that was causing him difficulties.

I think we all saw what happened on his second run, which was only his second timed lap therefore, running down the main straight into that bottom hairpin, he just got a little bit out of shape on the braking, went deep and that’s 0.7 of a second just there. That’s quite a big gap without which he would have easily got through to Q3 and whatever.

So he would hold his hand up and say “my mistake, my error”. I think we would be a little more rounded and say we should have actually encouraged more strongly that he was pursuing a program a bit more like George’s, so that’s our mistake and we should frankly be making a car that is just not so tricky as the one we’ve got at the moment which is causing the drivers to make very uncharacteristic errors...and locking up at the end of a straight into a hairpin is not in Lewis’ recipe book and it’s a consequence of the car being too tricky. - James Allison

James Vowles, James Allison, Andrew Shovlin, and Toto Wolff in the 2019 Debriefs

Lewis to James Allison during the launch:

throwback to this because i still relate spiritually

Casually placing his hand on his rib and embracing him like a brother🥰

the m in bdsm stands for mercedes actually

In the spirit of the holiday season can we consider that Mercedes is a family BECAUSE the vibes are rancid not in spite of. They have that awkward family dinner thing going for them and I mean that with love.

Complete with the grandpa that says wack shit like we’re closing the gap to Red Bull (Toto), the ‘sure let’s get you to bed grandpa’ uncle (James A), the rich uncle that may or may not be in a new age wellness cult (Lewis), the cousin that everyone is compared to (Bono), the one that came for the spiked eggnog (Shov), the hormonal teenager that is loud about how much he hates sitting at the kids table (George), the kids table (Mick, Fred, Kimi), the one they don’t talk about but still haunts the narrative (Nico), the goodest boy (Roscoe), the one sane relative that went low contact and moved away to live his best life (Valtteri). 

But they all still come together year after year, no matter what (for Susie, Merc fans and the Silver Arrows to take aim once again). Happy Holidays! Hope next year is a good one!

JAMES: George was absolutely inconsolable in the immediate aftermath of the race. However it is a testament to his character, to the strength of his character, that instead of crawling into a little hole and suffering in silence, not withstanding the fact that he was that upset, he came out, he spoke to every single person on the team at the track, apologised to them in person for his mistake, and owned it properly.

Mercedesamgf1: Back together and ready for 2024 💪

DADS ARE BACK FROM THE STORE, DIVORCE WHO

I know everyone thinks Newey is going to go to Ferrari to join the HPSauce super team with Lewis and Charles, but I still think there's a chance we may see a Newey/Allison (and Max) teamup at Merc, and honestly at that point the rest of the grid may as well just retire.

Just to be clear, do you still think there's a chance you can sign Max Verstappen next year? Toto Wolff: If I was Max, I would stay at Red Bull in 2025. But I'm not Max. I'm really bad at signing, actually. Because it's the quickest car, but there are other factors. So you think there's still a chance you can sign him next year? Toto Wolff: If I say this, I might fuck up my whole strategy.

one last time

Sebastian Vettel & James Allison | Hungary 2015

That’s what you were supposed to say, Toto. But oh well… Thank God we still have James in this doomed team 🥲

some highlights from jallison post testing:

“we have to satisfy the [front wing] rule so we have to have some flap there but uh don’t want an enormous one so… made a small one” 🤷

“the horrid snappy rear end is happily not troubling us in the way that it did in the past” 😌

“i would deeply love to be invited into the redbull garage and to take their engine cover off and delve around under those snorkly things” 🔧

jallison’s big brain vs the fia: the battle continues

"F1 Testing complete ✅ The next time you’ll see the W15 back on track, it will be at the first race of the season 🙌" - february 23, 2024 📷 @.mercedesamgf1 / instagram