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F1 pundit Ted Kravitz has questioned the future of Mercedes as quite a few significant members of the team have parted ways, one after the other. The news before the F1 Brazilian GP last weekend saw chief technical officer Mike Elliot's departure being announced.
Now that departure might not seem like a big thing in isolation as employee attrition is a very common thing but it does raise questions when one looks at it from a broader view.
Earlier in the season, James Vowles left the team to lead Williams. A few years back, some of the key personnel that helped Mercedes become this championship-winning juggernaut also found their way out of the team. This includes Aldo Costa, the man instrumental in building the dominant V6 Turbo power unit, and Andy Cowell as well.
Mike Elliot had been part of the team for over a decade but the failed zero-sidepod car concept seemingly led to his departure.
In his Ted's Notebook segment on Sky Sports, Ted Kravitz questioned if the disintegration of the Mercedes dream team could have a lasting effect. He said:
“I ask myself, it’s the first race since the departure of their chief technical officer Mike Elliott, who was instrumental in so much of their success, even though he was in charge of the design group which got these last two cars so wrong, is the Mercedes dream team changing fundamentally now in a way that they can quickly bounce back and become that dream team again?
He added:
“James Allison is still there, Toto Wolff is still there, Andrew Shovlin is still there, but there has been some key departures – Andy Cowell, James Vowles, the Italian engineer [Aldo Costa]."
Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes can bounce back, so we have to believe they can: Ted Kravitz
Ted Kravitz also raised questions over whether the Mercedes culture and work ethic would still be a part of the team when the key personnel leave. While Lewis Hamilton has backed the team to achieve it, Kravitz felt there were questions that needed to be answered.
He said:
“And I’m just wondering, like all dream teams change, whether there is some transformation about this team, and whether they’re going through a bit of a change and whether that dream team ethic and quality can survive next year? Lewis Hamilton believes they can, so I think we have to believe they can as well, but that’s going to be a challenge going forward.”
Post Ferrari's dominant era in the early 2000s, the team also went through something similar in terms of a dream team exodus. The key personnel started leaving after Michael Schumacher's retirement in 2006 as one by one Ross Brawn, Jean Todt, and Rory Byrne left. Mercedes might be looking at the same and hoping it can arrest the slide that it currently faces.
