‘Never in my wildest dreams’… Mercedes director laments horrible Sao Paulo GP, writes email to factory

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Mercedes technical director James Allison couldn’t believe how poorly his team performed in Brazil last weekend.

Allison was speaking to the F1 Nation Podcast after a disastrous race at Interlagos for his team.

All of a sudden, after looking like they had wrapped up second place in the Constructors’ Championship, Mercedes could still be under pressure.

Ferrari had far from a good weekend either, but still managed to close the gap to the British team in the standings to 20 points.

It’s amazing to see the change in fortunes for Mercedes in Brazil after James Allison’s team recorded a race victory in Sao Paulo 12 months ago.

George Russell finished in first place for his maiden Formula 1 victory, although he’s not been able to add to that tally since.

Russell couldn’t even take the chequered flag as his car had to be retired given the high temperature he was dealing with.

The more experienced teammate at least picked up four points but lost plenty of ground on Sergio Perez as he chases second place in the Drivers’ Championship.

Mercedes director Allison fuming after Brazil display

Asked if he was caught out by the lack of pace his car had, Allison said: “Yeah of course we were. I just wrote an email back to the factory saying I feel knocked for six by it because we came here, it would have been too much to imagine that there was a repeat of last year’s win because the stars would have to align somewhat for that.

“But I felt we’d be troubling the podium, now, you could say you’ve been undone by your own hubris, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that we would have had the torrid weekend we just had.

“In some ways, there’s a comfort in that as we must have just got something wrong and we’ll go off and uncover what that was.

“With a bit luck and the lovely thing that racing gives you, in a couple of weeks’ time we’ll come and hopefully put it to bed.”

Allison admitted the main issues the two Mercedes faced in Brazil was the overheating of their rear tyres and the ‘annoying’ amount of understeer they suffered.

Hamilton was also disappointed with the tyre strategy set out by the team although that’s unlikely to have made much of a difference to where they finished the race.

It sums up how the chasing pack have coped this season that Mercedes are still the next best team behind Red Bull but are currently 400 points shy of their total.

Max Verstappen would have won both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships on his own such is his dominance.

The pressure is on the other nine teams on the grid to find a way to catch Red Bull in 2024.