Mercedes Technical Director makes big confession, hints at trying to copy Red Bull’s floor design for F1 advantage
Mercedes' Technical Director has recently confirmed that they have been trying to look at the Red Bull floor imagery.
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Throughout the better part of the F1 turbo-hybrid era of the last decade, Mercedes had established themselves as an indomitable force. The Stuttgart-based team was second to none when it came to car designs, engine power, as well as driver pairing. There came a time when the Red Bull drivers were repeatedly plagued by reliability issues with Daniel Ricciardo leaving the team altogether because of these mishaps, but Mercedes stayed strong. And after 8 consecutive World Championship wins, their downfall arrived with Red Bull‘s rise.
In the 2021 Formula One season, Max Verstappen arose as a new challenger against Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes veteran with seven F1 titles to his name. While the scales were tipped towards Hamilton, his young rival attained the impossible and won the Championship in the end. This was the start of a new era in F1. Throughout the 2022 season, Red Bull slowly chipped away at Mercedes’ dominance, and finally, they have now become the topmost team in the pinnacle of motorsports with their all-powerful RB-19 racecar.
Meanwhile, Mercedes have now retreated to the lower ranks in the Standings. They are no longer regularly seen winning the races. The last victory that Lewis Hamilton enjoyed was in 2021, in Jeddah. So, it goes without saying that they have been overly interested in knowing the secret to Red Bull’s success–and they suspect it all lies in the RB-19 floor setup. Thus, when Sergio Perez crashed during Qualifying in Monaco and his car was lifted up by the crane, Mercedes Technical Director James Allison has admitted that they looked closely to find out the special factors in the RB-19 floor.
James Allison basically confesses Mercedes might resort to plagiarism to copy Red Bull’s floor design
Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari have been the top three teams in F1 for a long time, and there is an immense rivalry between them. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and with only one podium finish in six Grands Prix, the Silver Arrows are becoming really desperate for some improvement in their results.
Thus, James Allison said, “ [We] got a nice clutch of Red Bull [floor] imagery and that’s always a good thing for our aerodynamicists to pore over and see if we can pick out details that will be of interest to us in our ongoing test programme.”
This confession might now blow up and become major news in the upcoming days since Red Bull will not take kindly to Mercedes copying their designs. Last year, the Brackley outfit had kicked up a storm when Red Bull were convicted of surpassing the cost cap in F1, and this time, RBR might use the information regarding Merc’s plagiarism as a leverage to compel the FIA to come down harshly on Toto Wolff’s team.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)