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Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott's departure caused a lot of reactions. Many believe that his departure is related to the fact that Mercedes abandoned the zero-pod concept. In an interview with the media, Toto Wolff explained why Elliott decided to say goodbye to F1.
"Mike was my number one employee for many, many years in terms of how he performed. We are going to miss one of the most clever people in the industry. It was just a hard toll on him over those many years and I find it very remarkable that somebody can say 'you know what? I need to do something else rather than holding on to this'.
Formula 1 anyway is an incestuous environment. If someone is strong and says 'I'm done with it' for the time being that's good”. - Wolff said.
Toto Wolff
Reporters were interested in whether the performance in Bahrain and lack of performance was the reason why Elliott left the team.
Wolff immediately denied that one man could be the reason why such things happen. He sees Mercedes as one team, made up of a large number of people. The responsibility can never be on just one person.
"It's never the decision of a single person.
I think as a group, we are trying to build the quickest race car and obviously we were so far down that route with the concept of the car, that we thought maybe we got on top of it, we didn't. That's why we changed it and we put lots of plasters on the car in order to be more competitive like we see now.
But that hasn't got any correlation. It's no single person's fault if a car doesn't perform. It's also not one single person that makes the car faster. I think we have such a strength in the organisation that you can take one out and everybody else is going to cover that.
I don't think that's going to change anything next year." Source: Gpfans