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Christian Horner believes a seven-figure High Court case over Red Bull Powertrains recruitment has impacted Mercedes’ engine performance.

Red Bull Powertrains was founded last year after Honda had announced they would leave Formula 1 at the end of the 2021 season.

In doing so, Red Bull set about an aggressive recruitment campaign and began luring staff from Mercedes’ engine headquarters in Brixworth, around 30 miles from their own Milton Keynes base.

Team advisor Helmut Marko said around 50 people had left Mercedes to join Red Bull including Ben Hodgkinson, who was head of mechanical engineering at the Brixworth operation and is due to join Red Bull in May.

The matter ended up at the High Court and, according to Horner, the fact it did, and how much it had cost, showed just how concerned Mercedes were – despite Toto Wolff having insisted he would lose no sleep over it.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Horner said: “I mean, we’ve spent a million quid in the High Court fighting for a couple of them. You don’t do that for the ones you want to lose. That (£1million) is what it would have cost them (Mercedes).

“You’re not telling me you take out the head of mechanical design, the head of their energy recovery system, the head of manufacturing…that that doesn’t have an effect?”

Mercedes’ engine performance has been questioned this