Lewis Hamilton commits to Mercedes until 2025
Mercedes chief technical director James Allison believes that the team’s operation and driver line-up is enough to make rivals ‘envious’, with hungry F1 duo Lewis Hamilton and George Russell bidding to close the gap on Red Bull and mount a serious challenge for the top prizes in 2024.
All bar one Grand Prix win last season went to Red Bull as Max Verstappen dominated the rest of the field to clinch his third consecutive Drivers’ Championship. Hamilton, meanwhile, went the whole year without a victory for the second campaign running.
But Allison believes that the seven-time world champion, along with team-mate Russell, is more than capable of challenging Verstappen if Mercedes put their heads together and produce a competitive car during the off-season.
“They need us to provide them with the equipment,” Alisson told Sky Sports. “Lewis has proven seven times that he’s world championship material. And he was the highest-scoring non-Red Bull driver this year.
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“George has made one or two errors in the year but equally you’ve seen very strong performances from him in a number of races. It’s been quite a good learning experience for him in his second season with us. I’m certain that both men with the right equipment could be world champions if they fought hard and well enough.”
Despite Mercedes going without a race win in 2023 for the first time in 12 seasons, they showed enough consistency to clinch second spot in the Constructors’ Championship, five points ahead of Ferrari.
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And Allison claims that certain elements of the team stand them in good stead for an improved 2024, even with Red Bull coming off the back of a win that saw them amass twice as many points as their nearest competitors.
“We have lots of assets,” the Mercedes chief continued. “The team itself [is blessed] with very strong engineers, an operation that would be the envy of many, notwithstanding a few mistakes that we made here and there in the year.
“And a driver line-up that all teams would look at with an envious eye. With one of our drivers, we’ve got arguably the most successful person to ever sit behind the wheel of a racing car and in the other one a very promising younger man in George Russell.
“We’re a very fortunate team – we need to make that good fortune count next year and hopefully take it one better than P2.”
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