When Lewis Hamilton said he was leaving the team, it felt like Mercedes had taken a significant hit. But the real problem began when staff members started leaving the team mid-season. Just recently, Jerome D’Ambrosio and Loic Serra left for Ferrari and now the Silver Arrow confirmed that Gioacchino Vino will be leaving the team too. Mercedes is crumbling at the hands of Toto Wolff and everyone is wondering if they will be able to recover from this.

However, Toto Wolff has put years into making Mercedes a multiple-time world champion team and he will not let that go in vain. In a shocking announcement from Eddie Jordan, the former team owner revealed to the world that he was Adrian Newey’s manager and he dropped a cryptic message in an Oyster Yachts YouTube video. That message paves the way to believing that maybe Newey will come to Mercedes’s rescue.

Toto Wolff and Co. working overtime to change their current trajectory

Now there are two main things we need to talk about here, one being Eddie Jordan’s say on Newey’s career and what Mercedes has to say. While talking about where the RB20 mastermind will go, Jordan stated,“There’s no ink on any paper. It doesn’t matter whether it is blue, black or red. It’s not relevant. And I have a belief that no decision has been made and neither should any decision be made. He has achieved so much in his lifetime.”

When he said blue, he meant Williams, who is pursuing Newey, black stood for Mercedes and red was for Ferrari. When Mercedes’ technical chief James Allison was asked about how he feels about working with Adrian Newey, he replied, “That is quite a hypothetical question but I see no reason why not.” However, Allison knows how it is when it comes to working with mastermind engineers like Newey.

He explained his take on how he would go about it if that were to happen saying, “You’d have to be reasonably clear about who was doing what but I think that any team that’s looking at Adrian on the market as a person who is pretty effective would be asking the same question of how you bring a guy like that in and make the most of him.” 

Mercedes is struggling with their car and now with its team disbanding to get into other teams, but with Jordan saying that the black team is still an option, Newey might just come to their rescue.

The departure of Mercedes’ chief aerodynamicist

Is Mercedes becoming an undesirable team to stay in? Well, that’s how the staff’s behavior is making it seem. Many members from the Silver Arrow garage are leaving the team to seek opportunities elsewhere. Last season, Mike Elliott, chief technical officer for Mercedes, decided to leave the team when he saw that the team was on its decline. Other teams like Aston Martin, Red Bull, and McLaren have been places where staff members have been relocating.

Ferrari recently got their hands on Jerome D’Ambrosio and Loic Serra. It was not long before Gioacchino Vino decided to leave the team too. He, being the chief aerodynamicist, has put Toto Wolff under more pressure than before. Christian Horner announced that over 200 former Mercedes staff members are now working with RBPT. Lewis Hamilton’s departure also was a huge issue that has kept Toto Wolff up a few nights thinking about who will replace the 7-time world champion in 2025. If the staff of a certain team is not happy, it could lead to them leaving, and that’s exactly what is going on with Mercedes.

With that said, where do you think Mercedes is headed once this season is over? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.