James Allison, Chief Technical Officer at Mercedes, has spoken of a memorable occasion where Toto Wolff gave a rousing speech to the team during a particularly difficult weekend. When reflecting on the Silver Arrows' many achievements in recent years, Allison admits that it is the occasions where things were not going so well that often stick in his mind. One of these was the weekend of the Monaco Grand Prix in 2017, where the team endured a tough qualifying that saw Lewis Hamilton start down in 13th. This led to team principal Wolff speaking to the staff in an effort to boost morale. "We'd had a miserable weekend," Allison told the F1 Nation podcast. "And we're not organised and not performing well. "On Sunday morning, Toto got us all together and spoke to us in a way that I found quite inspiring, just saying that we all know this has not been good, we all know that we haven't performed well, but let this be the low point, and let's make everything we do for the remainder of the weekend take us forward from here. "And we're going to come home from this weekend with as many points as is possible to get from this starting place, and we're going to make sure that we don't show this weakness in the future. "It was such a calm and measured response to a weekend that was [a] fairly dismal performance, and really exactly what everyone needed to hear prior to the race, and we did manage to deliver well from that point forward." Hamilton went on to work his way up to seventh place in the race, whilst teammate Valtteri Bottas finished in fourth after qualifying third. It is the way that the team responds to tough moments like this that makes these occasions more memorable to Allison. "It's actually been races where we stumbled a bit, but have had the right reaction. They're the ones that tend to stick with me, and a few where we've snuck in an unexpected win out from under people's noses."
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