Martin Brundle believes Lewis Hamilton’s dream of taking Mercedes engineers with him to Ferrari will be hampered by contract clauses.
There had been rumours that Mercedes could lose more key personnel and see several staff members walk out with Hamilton.
However, Sky Sports pundit Brundle doesn’t think it’ll be so simple for Hamilton to cherry-pick Mercedes’ staff.
“It’s hard because I don’t think [Hamilton] will speak the language, he certainly won’t know the team like Charles does,” Brundle told the Sky Sports F1 podcast.
“That’s why I think Lewis will want to try and take a few people with him, but there will be non-compete clauses that prevent him doing that. You really want to take some of your own gang with you so you can hit the ground running.
“But I think he’ll have such respect there that if Lewis said ‘I want the back wheels put on the front’, they’ll do it straight away. He could do a Michael Schumacher and turn them into champions again.
“Or he could do a [Sebastian] Vettel or [Fernando] Alonso where it was a near-miss. If Lewis really wants to get a fast start in a completely different team, he’ll have to go and embed himself in it.”