Mercedes technical director James Allison hopes for “spiteful characteristics of the rear end” to become more “friendly” in W15

Mercedes technical director James Allison recently dove deep into the W15's development and what the grid can expect from the upcoming machine from the eight-time world champions. The W15 will be Mercedes' answer to Red Bull as they try to bounce back to the top of the grid and at least fight for the World Championship.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Allison at first insisted that it was too early to properly gauge the performance of his team's machine. He, however, hopes that the W15 shows some improvement in the rear end and handling.

“It's impossible at this time of year to be anything other than apprehensive, coupled with excited, coupled with frightened. However, what we do have some hope for is that some of the more spiteful characteristics of the rear end of our car will be a bit more friendly to us, and the handling of the car a happier thing. That's all in simulation, but nevertheless we’ve got reasonable grounds to believe that we've made some gain there,” he said.

Apart from that, the Mercedes technical director went on to address some general improvements that almost every team will make to their cars. These include shaving off some weight, improving the downforce of the chassis, and tinkering with their current power unit even more, all of which must be done under the technical regulations.

“On top of that [handling], you've got all the normal housekeeping type stuff of just making it lighter, making it more downforcy and hopefully getting a bit of uplift from the power unit side, with the calibration level tinkering that they're still capable of doing under these current rules,” he said.

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Toto Wolff on Mercedes W15's development for 2024

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff claims Mercedes has changed loads of parts for their 2024 F1 challenger. The Silver Arrows struggled to get back on top for the last two years. One of the main reasons was that they walked down the wrong path in terms of developing concepts. Hence, Lewis Hamilton's team will be changing quite a lot for the W15.

On this, Wolff was quoted as saying by Formu1a.uno:

"A different chassis, different aerodynamics, different characteristics, different suspension. Everything that we can change, we [will] change."

"So far, the results in the virtual world [the simulator] are positive. But we need to be careful in terms of managing our expectations. We need such a [big] step to catch up to the fight for a Championship," he added.

The Brackley-based team ended second in the 2023 F1 constructors' championship, but are miles behind Red Bull. Despite finishing second, they were unable to win a single race in 2023.