Toto Wolff has heaped praised upon one of his Mercedes team's newest hires who was snatched away from Red Bull.
The two teams are rivals on the track and that relationship is reflected between their respective team principals. Christian Horner has been the happier of the two so far this season, though, with his Red Bull outfit dominating the championship while Mercedes have struggled to perform.
But Wolff has managed to get one over his counterpart this year. Prior to the start of the season, it was confirmed that former Red Bull chief operating officer and HR director of many years, Jayne Poole, had been hired by Mercedes as a special adviser.
Brought in to take a closer look at the team's infrastructure, Mercedes hope Poole will be able to held shape the team's operations going forward. And Wolff has clearly been pleased with the impact she has made so far.
"Jayne is a person that I admired over the last 10 years, that I got to know 10 years ago, and I always had a very respectful relationship with," the Austrian told Motorsport.com. "She worked for the competitor, but you can respect people working for a competitor and acknowledge their performance.
"Her role at Red Bull was, in my opinion, a very large part of the success of the team over the last years. That relationship came to an end, like many relationships come to a natural end. I wanted to hire Jayne for a long time, but it was just never an option. And then it became now.
"She's a great addition. She has a lot of know-how, she's a great psychologist, she has seen another organisation, she knows everybody pretty much, and she has created forensic profiles of all of the good people in Formula 1. Having her eyes is a very, very strong edge to the organisation."
It is not uncommon for senior figures to leave one top team for another. Last year, Red Bull lost long-serving aerodynamics chief Dan Fallows to Aston Martin when he was hired as the Silverstone outfit's technical director.
But Red Bull have also done some raiding of their own. Ben Hodgkinson was snatched from Mercedes to become technical director of the Powertrains division, while Lewis Hamilton's former race engineer Phil Prew was also hired by Red Bull's Powertrains project.
