"19 engineers": Mercedes boss Toto Wolff refutes Christian Horner's claims of poaching 220 employees from the German squad

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has responded to Christian Horner's claims that Red Bull has hired as many as 220 employees from the German team. The war of words first began when Adrian Newey announced that he was leaving the Austrian team.

With Newey on the market by leaving Red Bull after almost two decades of association, McLaren boss Zak Brown commented on it by saying that it was the beginning of a domino effect. Talking about how the CVs from the Austrian team are floating in the job market, Brown felt that more names would follow suit as Newey leaves.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff concurred with these sentiments and claimed that quite a few Red Bull CVs are floating around. Replying to these claims, Christian Horner fired shots at Toto by saying that the Austrian should be worried about losing 220 employees to RBPT.

When these comments were put forward to Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, he claimed that Red Bull's Christian Horner had his numbers wrong. Claiming that only 19 engineers had left the squad, Toto told the media, including Sportskeeda,

"You got to work on the maths. 19 engineers. Whatever those numbers are, I think there’s natural fluctuations between teams that come and go, which is completely normal. I think we have an engine department that is as good as it can be with top leadership. There is not a millimetre in HPP that I wish would be different in terms of organisational set-up, in terms of the people that work there that I am lucky to interact with."

He added,

"It’s just a perfect organisation. You can see they’re just delivering and they have delivered for a long time. Since 2014, we have been pretty much the benchmark, or with maybe another engine, the benchmark. So that hasn’t changed. I really can’t wait for 2026 to come and see the different levels of performance of the power units.”

What had the Red Bull boss said about Mercedes losing resources?

Red Bull boss Christian Horner's comments came in the aftermath of Toto Wolff and Zak Brown claiming that Adrian Newey's departure could open the floodgates at Milton Keynes.

It was in reply to this that Christian Horner had boasted of Red Bull's power unit division poaching 220 personnel from Mercedes HPP. He'd told the media, including Sportskeeda,

“Mercedes, we’ve taken 220 people, 220, out of HPP into Red Bull Powertrains. So when we talk about losing people, I would be more worried about the 220 than one or two CVs.”

In all of this, while the back and forth continues, Red Bull continues to win on the track. In Imola, Max Verstappen once again showed how good the overall operation is and beat Lando Norris to the line.

Mercedes, on the other hand, has a task at hand and needs to take major strides to improve its form over a race weekend.