At the moment, the Formula 1 teams are putting the final touches on the designs of their cars for 2022 before the first pre-season tests that will take place in Barcelona from February 23.
The new cars will be born under a complete revision of the regulations, with the reintroduction of ground effect, which comes with the aim of improving racing and closing the gap between competitors.
However, while it is too early to make any predictions about the pecking order, Allison believes the sheer scale of the new regulations makes it inevitable that not everyone will get their new designs right and suggested some teams could have a tough year if they misread the new rules.
In a video released by Mercedes discussing the 2022 rules, Allison said: “Everyone in our team, and everyone in every other team, we’re doing our best to try to find a design and an approach that match this new set of rules.
“We will all discover together the beginning of this new season, and in the races that develop from there, we will see how everything is exactly.”
“I would imagine, as the cars are so new and so different, that one or two teams on the grid will have done very poorly and will have a terribly painful year.
“I imagine that all of us, to a certain extent, will have left things on the table that we had not anticipated and when we look at other cars we will think ‘oh, why don’t we think about that?’
“Then we will work very quickly to get that idea into our car as quickly as possible so that we can work our way up from whatever position we are in that first race. Or, if we are lucky enough to be up front, to keep the rivals behind. U.S”.
“It’s going to be quite the high and definitely something that won’t help us sleep too much for the entire season.”
Although Mercedes is the team with the most to lose from the rule change, having won the constructors’ championship every year since 2014, Allison believes the German carmaker is genuinely excited about the challenge they have been given.
“When the rules change in a way as big as this, then we approach it with all the fun and relish that challenge deserves,” he said.
“Our job is to look for the best opportunity in the regulations, and then use our ingenuity, skill and collective effort to try and find a setup that is better than the rest of the teams.”
“When everything is so new, everywhere you look in that whole new set of rules, which is twice as thick as the old one, there’s always an opportunity.”
“There are opportunities, but there are also dangers. We are going to try to make our way through the minefield to collect all the small treasure boxes that may be hidden among the mines, with the aim of creating a car that we hope will position us at the front of the grill”, concluded the one from Mercedes .
