Mercedes Tech Boss Blames the W14 for Lewis Hamilton’ s Underwhelming Season

Sabyasachi Biswas
|Published Dec 02, 2023 04:30AM UTC

James Allison, Mercedes’ technical director recently came out to support Lewis Hamilton after the seven-time world champion finished the year without a race win. Allison admits that none of it was Hamilton’s fault. Instead, the W14 and its technical inferiority is what caused this.

Allison, said on the The Controls Podcast, “A weapon that we know that a car that is reliable and decently quick, we absolutely know he [Lewis Hamilton will get the job done for us.”

Loading embed tweet https://twitter.com/MercedesAMGF1/status/1728891125874982997?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

With this, he added that Hamilton‘s bad days were because of the W14. If the car is not quick enough, Hamilton is not quick enough either. This is because the seven-time world champion doesn’t have an off day and he’s most certainly to excel under any situation with the right car.

Despite the relatively poor car, the Briton managed to drag the Silver Arrows to P2 in the Constructors’ championship. However, there was a time when the 38-year-old got frustrated at his team because his requirements were not met in Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton’ s frustration towards W14 and more

After the pre-season testing’s culmination ahead of the campaign, Lewis Hamilton asked Mercedes to make major rectifications to the W14. However, over the course of the season they were not made, which deeply frustrated the Stevenage-born.

Notably, it wasn’t casualness within the team that hindered the rectification. The main cause was that nobody knew what to rectify, and most importantly how to rectify.

Loading embed tweet https://twitter.com/LewisHamilton/status/1729167806619590713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The Silver Arrows almost lost their P2 spot to Ferrari in the end of the season. Still, George Russell’s final race heroics helped them hold on to second place. With the season now over, Mercedes’ sights are firmly set for 2024 now.

In the upcoming season, Toto Wolff’s team is looking to arrive with a new concept and lots of structural changes within the car. Wolff wants these changes to show results on the track from the very get go, because he too, was incredibly frustrated with the mechanical side of things this year.

Post Edited By:Somin Bhattacharjee

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About the author

Sabyasachi Biswas

Sabyasachi Biswas is an F1 journalist at The SportsRush. With over one and a half decades of love for the sport and five years of experience in the field, he dreams to be a regular at the paddock when the lights go out. A Red Bull fan and F1 fan in general over the years, he enjoyed watching Felipe Massa, Sebastian Vettel, and Max Verstappen dominate the track. Apart from F1, he's also a big-time Madridista and Federer fanatic. He was a sub-junior level footballer, won inter-district quizzes and debate competitions back in school. A travel freak throughout, he tries different cuisines and learns new cultures whenever he's away from the keyboard.