Trust Issues at Mercedes

Ross Brawn says he left Mercedes at the end of 2013 because he could no longer trust Niki Lauda or Toto Wolff.

Brawn remained Mercedes boss after it purchased his title-winning Brawn GP team ahead of the 2010 season. He remained at the helm for four seasons and helped orchestrate the team's return to competitiveness in 2013, having played a key role in luring Lewis Hamilton from Mercedes.

However, he left his role at the end of 2013 and has now revealed it was due to his relationship with non-executive chairman Lauda and Wolff, who had both been added to the team's management structure.

"What happened at Mercedes is that people were imposed on me who I couldn't trust," Brawn says in his new book Total Competition. "I never really knew what they were trying to do. I mean Niki would tell me one thing, then I would hear he was saying something else."

Brawn also recalls Wolff's "famous stroll along the beach" with former F1 team boss Colin Kolles, when Wolff made several disparaging remarks about him which became "semi-public" afterwards.

"He said I was resting on my money now. I had got all this money and I wasn't interested in the team anymore, and I wasn't motivated and I wasn't doing this, I wasn't doing that. That the team needed a fresh impetus and all that sort of stuff. Diressing slightly, he was very new to the team and he had been flattered by the board's attention.

"What the board had said to him, from what I understand, is 'This team is not working for some reason, you're a smart businessman, you know Williams, can you just go in there and tell us what's wrong?' So he was giving Kolles a snapshot of what he was mentally rehearsing, I guess."

Brawn says the hiring of Paddy Lowe in 2013 to a technical role further strained his relationship with both men.

"So I was beginning to deal with people who I didn't feel I could ultimately trust; people within the team, who had let me down already in terms of their approach.

"Then in early 2013, I discovered Paddy Lowe had been contracted to join the team and it had been signed off in Stuttgart. When I challenged Toto and Niki, they blamed each other. I met them to have it out with them. And they both pointed to each other..."

Total Competition: Lessons in strategy from Formula One, written by Brawn and Adam Parr, is published by Simon & Schuster on November 3.

Well, well, well.

Link: http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/17830680/ross-brawn-left-mercedes-trust-niki-lauda-toto-wolff