Mercedes technical director James Allison claims working with Lewis Hamilton has been "very different" to what he imagined while revealing the opportunity to do so was influential in his decision to join the Brackley-based team.

The British designer would be the replacement for Paddy Lowe, who joined Williams, after leaving Ferrari mid-way through last year following the death of his wife and has previously worked at Renault and Benetton, winning titles at each one.

That pattern looks set to be continued with Mercedes, as they hold commanding leads in both championships, but before he would become a key member in his title bid, Allison commented he had never really met Hamilton.   

“It has been a considerable pleasure joining Mercedes this year for many, many reasons but one of those was that it was my first opportunity to start working alongside Lewis,” he said. “I think I’d only ever said hello to him once in all the years prior to that."

Though it may seem the triple world champion is very much his own guy and perhaps wouldn't have the type of relationship with his team as say, Sebastian Vettel, Allison admitted he was surprised by Hamilton's approach.

“The experience of working with him is very different to what I imagined it would be and I’ve found a racing driver of the sort of excellence that all of us can see from his statistics and the way he goes about his job," he stated.

“But what has been particularly good is that I’ve found a guy that conducts himself in a way that makes you happy to work alongside him and that’s been an enjoyable and good thing about joining Mercedes.”

His illustrious list of former employers means he has an equally impressive list of world champions he has worked with, including Vettel, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and now Hamilton. Consequently, that leads to a question many want to know, who is the best one of them?

“It’s a frustrating question because there’s an impossibility of answering it as there’s only one way to know for sure and it’s to line them all up in exactly the same equipment on the same days and have a championship where you find out exactly,” he said.

“All I can tell you is that all three of them have got the victories and the achievements that they have, not by good fortune but by being brilliantly skilful racing drivers.”