Mercedes involved in ‘full frontal war’ with ‘brain drain’ narrative planted by rivals

Lewis Hamilton behind the wheel of the Mercedes W15 at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix

Mercedes technical director James Allison has dismissed the notion that the team have suffered a “brain drain” over recent times, claiming rival F1 outfits have planted such “narratives in the press.”

Having won a record eight consecutive Constructors’ World Championships since the beginning of F1’s V6-hybrid era in 2014, Mercedes have been restricted to just a single race victory since the ground-effect regulations were introduced in 2022.

James Allison rejects Mercedes brain drain ‘narrative’

The team’s loss of performance on track has coincided with Mercedes losing a number of key figures including Lewis Hamilton, who announced in February that he will join Ferrari on a multi-year contract from F1 2025.

In a separate development last month, meanwhile, Ferrari announced the signings of Loic Serra and Jerome D’Ambrosio from Mercedes.

Serra has been appointed to the role of head of chassis performance engineering, with D’Ambrosio set to serve as deputy team principal to Fred Vasseur. Both are due to start work at Maranello in October.

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Speaking at the Miami Grand Prix – days after F1 design legend Adrian Newey announced his departure from the team – Red Bull team principal Christian Horner commented that Red Bull have hired 220 Mercedes staff to work in the team’s newly established Red Bull Powertrains engine division ahead of the F1 2026 season.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff responded to Horner’s claims at the following race at Imola, telling media including PlanetF1.com that Red Bull had, in fact, taken just “19 engineers” from Mercedes.

Wolff went on to describe the staff movement as “natural fluctuations between teams” and “completely normal.”

Appearing on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, Allison has also rejected any talk of a ‘brain drain’ within Mercedes, insisting the team are “not particularly affected.”

And he claimed the narrative has been fed to the media by “other teams” attempting to “distract attention from themselves.”

Responding to the suggestion of a ‘brain drain’ at Mercedes, Allison said: “I think it probably pays to recognise what a sort of full frontal war Formula 1 is and the war of trying to make your car competitive is fought on every front.

“So it is convenient for certain teams who have brain drains of their own to put narratives in the press about the sort of misfortunes that others might be suffering.

“And actually, our team is not particularly affected in a way that you might imagine if you were to read the motor racing press.

“We have people join, we have people leave and there’s an equilibrium between that. If there weren’t, our team would be just getting smaller.

“We have lost some very good people, we’ve gained some very good people and twas ever thus in the sport.

“The stuff that you read in the press is ordinarily things that other teams are briefing to distract attention from themselves.

“I haven’t felt in our team that we are suffering as a result of the large-scale movement of talent. I’ve just felt the continuing ongoing fight that you have in this sport for good people to be at your team and giving them reasons to want to be at your team.

“We pay competitively in the pit lane and that’s not a problem.”

Having become Mercedes’ chief technical officer in early 2021, Allison was reappointed to the role of technical director last season in a job swap with Mike Elliott, who later left the team.

Allison finds it “thrilling” to have returned to the front line, describing the “professional satisfaction” that comes with holding a senior role within a team.

He said: “It is thrilling to feel properly embedded in a team.

“It’s even more thrilling to be granted the honour of having a position of leadership in a team and to know, when we collectively have taken the right moves, that you were there and standing up and being counted on the difficult days.

“That is very, very, very invigorating and gives professional satisfaction in a way that I imagine would be very hard to find in most jobs.”

Asked if the role of an F1 technical director had changed in the time he was away, he added: “I don’t think particularly fundamentally.

“We moved as a team from a phase of trying to just keep that unbroken run unbroken [in 2021], to it being broken and being in a buildback phase and to be trying to give people the faith that this was going to come good.

“And therefore, [it was] much more needing to find a buoyant but realistic leadership style in a period where there’d be lots of reason to think: ‘Do you know what? Maybe it’s time to leave this team and go somewhere else.’”

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