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'Not enough people applying for F1 jobs', suggests Susie Wolff

Susie Wolff has said there is a growing shortfall in the number of talented technical people applying for jobs in Formula 1.

She explained that this was an increasing problem for her husband Toto, team principal of Mercedes, who is struggling to find the top calibre of people to work at Brackley.

"They're very conscious of the fact that there's not enough people applying for the top positions," she said.

"The Head of HR at Mercedes is also very aware of that and is trying to change the situation."

Wolff was talking to Forbes magazine about her own desire to see more women in motorsport.

"[Toto] is not concerned about what gender they employ," she said in a new interview. "He's just concerned about the level of talent.

"He will always pick the best candidate for that role, regardless of gender."

On-the-mend Lauda sorely missed at Mercedes - Wolff

Team bosses are also known to be worried about the impact on any future cost cap within the sport limiting what they can afford to pay technical staff.

It might price them out of the market for top talent, and force them to cut back on the number of people they can hire in development roles.

"In the UK, you are talking about potentially thousands of jobs," Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out earlier this year. "Our biggest cost drivers are regulations, sporting and technical."

Even before it's introduced, the threat of a cost cap is seen as a signal to the industry that Formula 1 is no longer in a position to invest in staff, and that it may soon be having to let the people they do have go in order to balance the books. That in turn affects current and future recruitment.

Mercedes employs more technical staff in the UK than any other Formula 1 team. If it's struggling to fill top positions, then smaller teams with much more restricted budgets will be having even more trouble.

The near-collapse of Force India put over four hundred jobs at risk in August. The buy-out of the business by a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll has saved those jobs and allowed the team to start investing in new development for 2018 as well as for next season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.