Newly reappointed Mercedes technical director James Allison is already “plotting and scheming” ways to return to former glory in the coming years.
Allison returned to the role of technical director after a job swap with Mike Elliott earlier in the season. He is now in the process of plotting the next steps for this season and next.
Lewis Hamilton claimed in Canada that the team now knows where their “North Star” is in terms of development, suggesting that plans for the future are coming into place.
Allison said that he is “certainly enjoying” being back in post as technical director and is “putting plans in place”.
“I’m just tucked in with my colleagues plotting and scheming what we’re bringing for the tracks this year, and also similarly what we what we’re trying to do for next year,” he said.
“We just had the main press conference and I was trying to express what an actual thrill that is, when you’ve got a little bit of a picture forming internally in the team with all your fellow engineers of how that journey is going to look.
“It’s just a bit like waiting for Christmas. You can’t wait for it to arrive, and it’s very exciting.”
Mercedes jumped Aston Martin in the standings in Barcelona after a double podium for the Silver Arrows.
The team introduced a major upgrade in Monaco which has so far resulted in an upwards trajectory for the eight-time champions. Allison, however, was hesitant about Mercedes’ prospects in Montreal.
“This track is very much a different set of challenges,” he said.
“So if we can wiggle our way through this weekend with okay performance, then that will be a good feeling.
“I tend to think that most of what we did was sort of medium and high-speed gains. There’s not a lot of medium and high-speed here, so I think we’ll perhaps not be as strong here as we were in Barcelona, and it’s still for us to make a sort of matching set of gains in the low-speed stuff a little bit later in the year.”
