Paddy Lowe defends Mercedes F1 team's technical structure

Although critics have questioned whether or not Mercedes' efforts are being compromised by a structure that boasts Bob Bell, Aldo Costa, and Geoff Willis working under Ross Brawn, Lowe says his initial impressions are positive.

Rather than the team being hurt by the wealth of technical talent on board, he thinks the trio's presence is a key factor in explaining how Mercedes has been able to make so much progress since the end of last year.

"If people think that there are too many technical directors in Mercedes, then all you can say is that it seems to be working for them," said Lowe, who joined the team in his role as executive director (technical) in June.

"Mercedes have made fantastic progress in the last 12 months, so what is wrong with that?

"The other thing is that it is not as though there are a whole bunch of cooks trying to do the same job.

"There is always a huge amount of work to do in this business if you want to be successful.

"Within two days of starting in my job here, I could already not find the hours in the day to do what I could see needed doing. That is how it should be, that is the nature of F1."

Lowe believes the key to Mercedes getting the most out of its technical brainpower has been in giving them all clearly defined roles than ensure there are no conflicting responsibilities.

"Even though we have a very wide and deep range of senior people at Mercedes, we are all gainfully employed and we all respect each other's talents," he said.

"That plays to our strengths and helps us work together. There is a very good division of effort between the different players. And that is what I am fitting in to.

"It works really well. You need that strength in depth to put the attention on different things."

Lowe is being lined up as Mercedes' future team principal, but until he takes over from Ross Brawn he has been tasked with providing input in to ways the outfit can be improved.

He reckons, however, that Mercedes is actually in pretty good shape in terms of the structure it has in place.

"As I have come in there is certainly no need for a revolution," he said. "I think it is a great team. They have achieved fantastic progress over the past 12 months.

"It won the championship [as Brawn GP] in 2009. And although there were special circumstances around that, you still cannot win championships if you don't have some strengths around how to build, run, manage the car and exploit it on track.

"You always say you cannot win races without a good driver and a good car; but you cannot win a championship by miraculously producing a quick car.

"These things come with having all the right elements. That is all there."