What “gladiator” Allison’s reappointment reveals about Mercedes’ F1 shortcomings

On Friday morning, Motorsport.com revealed that Allison is going back to the previous position he held at the team, with his successor Mike Elliott swapping roles in the other direction and becoming the team’s chief technical officer.

In several ways, this is starkly new ground for the modern Mercedes squad, i that it finds itself in such dire straits compared to its years as F1’s dominator that a major change to its technical staff has been felt necessary and that it hasn’t been able to close a gap to a competitor with an initial car design update plan, as it did successfully, for example, in 2021.

And just two weeks ago team boss Toto Wolff was publicly stating that Allison had not returned to directly working on the Mercedes F1 car project from his part-time role as CTO. This also involved working with the America’s Cup team established by Mercedes co-owner INEOS.

At the same time, the reshuffle is very Mercedes.

Wolff says it was at Elliott’s urging that the change was made. That Elliott felt “with James we have a gladiator on the field and the troops are going to go through the fire for him and with him”. There has so far been no official message from Mercedes that the change has been made, which softens the impact for both Elliott and its organisation overall. But the team wanted the news out there.

This is both an attempt at preserving its much-vaunted united team culture and also, apparently, a bid to stoke its fire and revitalise its fortunes in F1 competition.

What cannot be fully known right now is how much Elliott’s decision was reached in reaction to the internal pressure at Mercedes that had been building – to recover from being so significantly knocked off its perch at the head of the F1 field by the 2022 rules reset and the return to running ground-effect cars.

It was always possible that one of the leading teams come 2021’s end and the new machines finally being introduced would lose their place. But while Mercedes fell so dramatically with the badly porpoising W13, Red Bull maintained its place at the sharp end and then roared clear once the RB18 and its downwash approach were lightened.

That aerodynamic concept, at full play with the critical suspension and underfloor part designs Red Bull has also nailed, has proved to be the best of the new era. And the team that moved first and so decisively to switch to that path, Aston…