Wolff defends Mercedes contract stance

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has defended the way the team deals with the contracts of their employees as it is important to ensure the stability of the team, following criticism from Renault's Cyril Abiteboul who has recently taken on a former Mercedes member of staff.

Abiteboul has lamented the fact that a former senior member of staff with the Silver Arrows is now with Renault but is not able to start work until 2019 due to a non-compete clause in his contract for a certain period.

"We signed up a senior person from Mercedes last year, 2017, and he is not due to join before 2019 because of the contractual situation," Abiteboul said last October.

"The UK is very favourable to protect employees for the benefit of the employer, but that is giving us a bit of a hard time. We know it, so we simply have to deal with it."

Wolff has since defended the way Mercedes negotiates contracts as he thinks this practice ensures the long-term stability of the team.

"It is simply a matter of keeping the important parts of the organisation together to ensure stability," Wolff told Motorsport.com.

"In this case, it was an employee who has just signed a new contract and whom Renault would have liked to see. That wasn't possible in that case because a replacement was missing."

Mercedes suffered a senior staff departure last year with Paddy Lowe leaving for Williams, but the team were able to bring in a replacement in the form of former Ferrari employee, James Allison. Wolff thinks this continuity is important.

"It is the breadth of the team that is responsible for success," he said.

"Durability had a great influence on success. The team we've put on has done a good job. Paddy has great qualities, but getting James Allison was the best decision we could have made.

"The success of a Formula 1 team is not the success of a single one - not of me and not of Niki [Lauda], nor of Ross [Brawn] or Norbert [Haug] - but rather the sum of the people who work together.

"We must create the framework conditions for them to succeed."