Mercedes technical director James Allison has agreed with Formula 1 president and CEO Stefano Domenicali in demanding that regulations are introduced to decrease the weight of the current flock of cars.
Over the last decade, the weight of the cars has increased dramatically, with them currently boasting a base weight of 798kg.
Staggeringly, this is over 200kg heavier than the cars were back in 2008, when they were visibly more nimble.
There are several reasons why the weight of the cars has increased, with current reasons being due to bigger tyres and the additional weight from having added the halo device to the cockpit.
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As F1 continues to push for sustainability though, things like batteries come with a substantial weight behind them, increasing the overall weight of the cars.
George Russell has called for the weight of the cars to be decreased and actually believes having a heavier car is making the sport more dangerous, due to the higher force felt in a collision.
Allison agrees with Russell and Domenicali in stating that the cars must become lighter, with it having become a recent “trend” that they’re seemingly increasing in weight year-on-year.
“I strongly agree with Stefano (Domenicali, Formula 1 CEO), and he’s not alone in thinking that this sort of inexorable upward trend in weight is something that has to be arrested and then reversed,” Allison told the media.
“Year-on-year, [the cars] were getting heavier. It isn’t super trivial to get the weight moving in the other direction. It is particularly tricky to dream up technical rules that are going to make the car much lighter.”
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Allison even gave an example of how the sport could introduce lighter cars, by simply decreasing the legal minimum weight and leaving it to the teams to figure out how to get their weight down.
“The way to make it lighter is to lower the weight limit and make it our problem,” he added.
“If cars are over the limit, then it forces us all to make some fairly difficult decisions about what we put in our cars and what we don’t”.