Christian Horner shares whopping number of Mercedes HPP employees that Red Bull has poached

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has shared that a whopping 220 employees from Mercedes HPP have been poached by his team as questions continue to rise over the Austrian team's future. The Milton Keynes-based team has had a torrid run off the track this year, with far too many things going on that have been a distraction.

In all of this, Adrian Newey dropped a bombshell as news of his departure from the team became public. Since then, rivals have commented on the situation, claiming that Newey was just the first of many who were heading towards the door.

There were even reports of Mercedes boss Toto Wolff offering Max Verstappen a £150 million per year contract to leave Red Bull. In the pre-race team principal press conference, Zak Brown and Toto Wolff were questioned on what they thought about Newey's departure.

Both of them felt that Newey could just be the beginning of a domino effect, which sees an exodus of talent from the team. Team principal Christian Horner, however, has snapped back at these comments from his rivals.

In what is quite clearly a staggering number, Horner revealed that for the Red Bull powertrain project, the team has poached as many as 220 Mercedes HPP personnel. The number is massive because it amounts to approximately 20% of the overall workforce at the German team. Talking to RacingNews365, Horner said,

"I think it's inevitable, I think the two [team bosses] involved, they talk a lot. And I'm not going to get sucked into a tit for tat. But I'd be more focused on Toto's own issues that he has, and I don't have any concern with the strength and depth [of Red Bull], there's always going to be movement between teams."

He adds,

"I don't know how many people we've employed from McLaren this year, or how many people [RB] has employed, but from Mercedes, we've taken 220 people out of HPP into Red Bull Powertrains. So when we're talking of losing people, I'd be a bit more worried about the 220 people than one or two CVs."

Red Bull addresses possible departure of Jonathan Wheatley

Amidst all of this, there have been reports that the senior technician team, including Pierre Wache, has committed to a long-term contract. At the same time, there have been suggestions that Christian Horner's main man in the past few years, Jonathan Wheatley, might want a way out.

Unlike Pierre Wache, Wheatley's contract is up for renewal, and since he's hit the glass ceiling at his current team, he could be looking at some other challenge. Addressing questions about Wheatley's future, Horner declined to comment, saying,

"I mean, there's rumours about everybody, but contracts between individuals, the terms and conditions, is not something that we really talk about to the public."

There is no smoke without fire, and it does appear that a few things are going on in the background at Red Bull that may not be ideal for the team or their future.