Mercedes director “hopeful” of challenging Red Bull for 2024 F1 championship

Mercedes Technical Director James Allison hopes their car will be competitive against the dominant Red Bull in 2024.

Red Bull pulled out another season with sheer dominance and won both championships by a large margin over their competitors. Mercedes, who finished the season in second place, has been trying to build a car competitive enough against Red Bull but has failed to do so in the past two years.

The Brackley-based team competed with Ferrari for second place in the championship and won by just three points. This was the general level of competition throughout the season. It was hard for any team to challenge Red Bull at the top, and as James Allison told Sky Sports, it was because the competitors "dropped the ball."

"I see the grid as Max particularly but Red bull more generally did standout the best job. The rest of us have really underperformed."

"The gap in race pace between Red Bull and everyone else was bigger in 2023 than it was in 2022 despite the grid as a whole has been compressing up. That's just us (Mercedes) dropping the ball, Ferrari dropping the ball. McLaren's recovery was still distant to Red Bull as we were."

Speaking of the 2024 season, Allison is confident of the team putting up a challenge against the reigning world champions.

"Our challenge, specifically, over winter and the last many months in making our 2024 car is to ensure that we don't let them off the hook like that for next year."

"I'm hopeful that we've learnt what we need to in order to give them (Red Bull) more of a fight."

One of the reasons earlier speculated in the season for the lack of competitiveness of the W14 was their 'zero pod' concept. Despite giving that up and bringing in a different car mid-season, their pace against other cars dropped. Lewis Hamilton then blamed it on the car's floor for not generating enough downforce.

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Mercedes supposedly to change the base design for the 2024 car

The team did not win a single race throughout the 2023 season, and there was only Brazil to compensate for this in the 2022 season when George Russell won his first F1 Grand Prix.

While they did manage to get into a handful of podiums in 2023, their goal is to ultimately fight for the world championship, which looks difficult in their current circumstances. Team principal Toto Wolff, however, had earlier revealed that the entire design concept of the car was to be changed for the 2024 season.

"We are changing the concept," Wolff said, according to Motorsport.com.

"We are completely moving away from how we laid out the chassis, the weight distribution, the airflow."

"I mean, literally, there's almost every component that's being changed because only by doing that, I think we have a chance."

If Mercedes manages to build a competitive enough car, multiple teams could be fighting for the world championship in the 2024 season. Their lineup is confirmed with Hamilton and Russell untill the end of the 2025 season, so there could be a lot to battle for.