Aston Martin "quadrupled" the salary of Red Bull's ex-head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows to poach him and hand him the role of their technical director, according to F1 hero Nico Rosberg. And the 2016 F1 world champion has also criticised his former team Mercedes for not doing the same thing in order to get the staff they need to get to the top of the F1 standings once again.
"I've heard also that Dan Fallows has also been quadrupled in salary plus an equity stake in the team," Rosberg claimed on Sky Sports. "The teams are going for it to try and get the talent from Red Bull which is the normal way in F1. That's what always happens.
"Mercedes - strange that they haven't been a little bit more active there. The knowledge that you also get around a set of regulations when you take someone from the best team is just so valuable. Perhaps that's a little surprising."
Mercedes dominated F1 between 2014 and 2021 as they won eight Constructors' Championships on the bounce. But the Silver Arrows have fallen well behind Red Bull since the start of the 2022 season after a new set of F1 regulations were introduced.
The Brackley-based team could only muster a third-place finish in the Constructors' Championship standings last year as they ended the season a staggering 244 points behind champions Red Bull. And this time around, Mercedes are already 135 points adrift of the energy drink giants after just seven Grands Prix.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell already appear to be out of contention to win this year's Drivers' Championship following a disastrous season for the duo last time out. But Rosberg, who spent four years as Hamilton's team-mate between 2013 and 2016, thinks Mercedes will now be able to close the gap on Red Bull by taking advantage of the images that surfaced following Sergio Perez's qualifying crash in Monaco last month.
"They have incredible talent at Mercedes and now the pictures from Monaco help a lot because thanks to Sergio's crash," the German added.
"There are beautiful pictures of the underbody of the car, which they can now take from those pictures and create a whole CAD model and do a whole accurate design in the computer of what that car is actually doing. That makes it very easy to start to really understand and learn about that Red Bull car."