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Red Bull and Mercedes faced off in High Court
Mercedes is having a tough time in 2022, and according to Red Bull Racing, that has to do not only with the design of the W13, but also with the fact that several employees of the German formation have left for Milton Keynes. Christian Horner thinks Mercedes is suffering more from that than it wants to admit.
According to Helmut Marko, some fifty employees are said to have traded Mercedes for Red Bull Racing. Most of these are joining the Red Bull Powertrains project, including Mercedes' head of mechanical engineering Ben Hodgkinson. According to Mercedes itself, however, it would only be about fifteen men.
Turmoil has hit Mercedes
An awful lot has been going on in the background on a legal level, Horner reveals in an interview with The Telegraph. According to the Red Bull team boss, a dispute with Mercedes eventually led to a case at the High Court. Horner believes that this whole process has had an impact on the engine performance of the Brackley-based team.
“I mean, we’ve spent a million quid in the High Court fighting for a couple of them. You don’t do that for the ones you want to lose. That (£1million) is what it would have cost them (Mercedes)," Horner said.
What Horner means by "what it would have cost them" is unclear. GPblog asked Red Bull for the exact meaning of Horner's words, but the Austrian team would not comment further than it has already done.
Mercedes has been weakened
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff still maintains that the departure of these employees is not a disaster and that it has been handled just fine. At rival Red Bull, they don't believe that: "You’re not telling me you take out the head of mechanical design, the head of their energy recovery system, the head of manufacturing…that that doesn’t have an effect?" Moreover, Andy Cowell, who is seen as the big man behind the success of Mercedes engines in the hybrid era, left Mercedes' engine department in 2020. According to Horner, this has also had a significant impact on the performance of the German engine.
