Racing
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Mercedes technical director James Allison says any suggestion the team is favoring George Russell or Kimi Antonelli is “utterly alien” to its culture, insisting Mercedes will only back one driver if the other is mathematically out of the title fight.
The issue flared again after the Spanish Grand Prix, where Russell and Antonelli lost time fighting each other through multiple phases of the race and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton went on to win. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said afterward that the intra-team battle may have cost the team five to six seconds, but the team has not shifted from its position that both drivers should be free to race unless the championship picture forces a different call.
Speaking on Mercedes’ Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show, Allison said fan perceptions and the team’s internal reality are far apart. “People are very invested in the people that they support and they want their driver to prosper above all others,” he said. “All I can say is if you ever wanted to understand where it sits on our psyche, you’d need to come and work in a team.”
Allison said the idea of favoritism does not fit how Mercedes operates. “You would understand how utterly alien that thought is to anyone in a team, and, when we hear it, it’s like we’re hearing another language,” he said. “Actually, we’re ambivalent about which one is better than the other. We want a 1-2 in every race and we don’t care the order.”
He did leave room for team orders later in the season, but only under a narrow condition. “The only point where we would start to have an opinion is if one driver is mathematically incapable of winning a championship and the other driver is in a fight with a third-party driver,” Allison said. “At that point, the team has a right to an opinion.”
That threshold has not been reached. Antonelli remains at or near the top of the drivers’ standings, while Russell is still firmly in the title fight, which has kept scrutiny on Mercedes strategy calls and fed speculation over whether the team should already be choosing a lead contender.
Allison said Mercedes sees the matter through a different lens because the team’s primary target is the constructors’ championship. “If we’re lucky enough to win a bonus, we win it on the basis of the constructors’ position, not the drivers’. We don’t get anything for that,” he said. “So, everything we care about is constructors-oriented and favouritism makes zero sense to us in that respect. We just want maximum points from both the drivers at all times.”