James Allison: Mercedes finishing second “the very best outcome” in 2023
Mercedes technical director James Allison believes the team exceeded expectations in F1 2023 by securing second in the constructors’ championship.
Mercedes pipped Ferrari to second in the season-ending Abu Dhabi, with the two teams separated by just four points at the end of the race.
It was a respectable turnaround for Mercedes as the team left the first race in Bahrain with the fourth-fastest car behind Red Bull, Aston Martin and Ferrari.
Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 season review show, Allison said that finishing P2 was a “great source of satisfaction”.
“From early on in the year from winter testing, first race, it was pretty clear that we had not even come close to matching what we’d hoped for with the car,” he said.
“That was no fun for anyone here. The job is to try and digest where you’re at rather than where you’d hoped you were at. The story of this season has been a team that has tried to do the very best with where we’d started and honestly, the very best outcome we could have had from where we started was coming P2.
“It’s a source of great satisfaction to all of us that’s what we managed to do.
“That was our objective and along the way we hoped to learn all that we needed to learn in order to try and mount a rather more impressive championship challenge in 2024.”
