Motorsport likes to talk about performance, innovation, and competition. What it talks about far less is trust, yet trust is the invisible currency that keeps the entire industry functioning.
In Formula 1 especially, the talent market is not large. Everyone knows everyone. CVs circulate quietly. Reputations travel faster than contracts. And in that environment, one word carries more weight and more tension than almost any other:
Poaching.
Why Poaching Feels Different in F1
In most industries, recruitment is transactional. In Formula 1, it is deeply personal.
Teams don’t just hire skills; they hire institutional knowledge, timing sensitivity, and competitive context. An engineer doesn’t simply “change jobs”, they cross a competitive boundary that may have taken years to build.
Because the paddock is small, actions are remembered:
- Who approached whom
- When they did it
- What they knew at the time
That’s why poaching in F1 isn’t judged solely by legality. It’s judged by intent, discretion, and timing.
Legal Doesn’t Mean Ethical
From a legal standpoint, most engineers are free to move. Gardening leave, non-competes, and confidentiality clauses exist, but they are not absolute barriers.
Ethically, however, the line is far less clear.
Is it ethical to:
- Approach someone mid-season when you know their team is exposed?
- Target engineers immediately after a senior departure?
- Act on inside knowledge about restructures or funding pressure?
- Use intermediaries to apply pressure rather than offering genuine opportunity?
None of this is illegal. But in a high-trust industry, legality is the lowest bar – not the standard.
The Difference Between Opportunity and Extraction
There is a fundamental difference between offering opportunity and extracting advantage.
Ethical recruitment in motorsport:
- Respects timing
- Protects confidentiality
- Avoids destabilising teams purely for competitive gain
- Treats candidates as professionals, not assets
Short-term gains from aggressive poaching often create long-term damage. Teams remember, engineers remember and so do decision-makers who may be on the other side of the table in three years’ time.
Why Trust Matters More Than Ever
Cost caps and resource limits have increased the strategic value of people. Losing the wrong engineer at the wrong moment can cost millions in lap time, development direction, or correlation understanding.
That makes trust, not contracts, the real stabiliser of the talent market.
When trust erodes:
- Counteroffers become toxic
- Information hoarding increases
- Collaboration suffers
- Retention becomes defensive rather than aspirational
In the long run, everyone loses.
The Recruiter’s Responsibility
This is where recruitment firms play a critical role for better or worse.
At Tiro, confidentiality is not a slogan; it’s a prerequisite for operating in a small, interconnected industry. Ethical recruitment means knowing when not to make a call, when to slow a process down, and when to advise a client that the timing is wrong, even if the role is urgent.
An ethical process includes:
- Strict protection of candidate identity
- Clear boundaries around competitive information
- No speculative approaches designed to destabilise teams
- Long-term relationship thinking over short-term placement wins
In a paddock where trust compounds, or collapses, quickly, experience matters. So does restraint.
The Candidate’s Side of the Equation
Engineers are not passive in this process.
Accepting a role gained through aggressive or poorly handled poaching can:
- Damage long-term credibility
- Create immediate trust issues in the new team
- Follow a candidate quietly for years
The most successful engineers understand that how they move matters as much as where they move. Reputation in Formula 1 has a long memory.
A More Sustainable Model
Formula 1 will always be competitive. Talent will always move. That is healthy.
But sustainable recruitment in a high-trust industry is built on:
- Transparency over secrecy
- Timing over opportunism
- Confidentiality over gossip
- Reputation over short-term gain
The question isn’t whether poaching should exist. It’s how it’s done and who bears the cost.
Because in Formula 1, long after the contracts are signed and the announcements fade, people remember who handled movement with integrity and who didn’t.
