Toto Wolff says the timing of Lewis Hamilton’s choice to maneuver to Ferrari left him unable to react within the driver market.
Hamilton signed with Ferrari in the beginning of this yr, with the seven-time world champion shifting to Maranello in 2025. The announcement of the change was made on February 1, previous to the beginning of the present season however a matter of weeks after a number of main drivers had signed contract extensions at their present groups, one thing Wolff says caught him out.
“I at all times see a possibility in change,” Wolff stated within the recently-released e book ‘Inside Mercedes F1: Life within the Quick Lane’. “For a minute, I used to be in disbelief on the timing of it. The following we talked about what it meant for the crew.
“I just like the state of affairs. It helps us as a result of it avoids the second the place we have to inform the game’s most iconic driver that we went to cease.
“There’s a cause why we solely signed a one-plus-one-year contract. We’re in a sport the place cognitive sharpness is extraordinarily necessary, and I imagine everybody has a shelf life. So I would like to have a look at the following technology. It’s the identical in soccer. Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola. They anticipated it within the efficiency of their prime stars and introduced in junior gamers who drove the crew for the following years.
“I completely had it on my radar that Lewis would go. I simply couldn’t perceive why he’d change to a different crew earlier than we knew if we had been going to be aggressive. It additionally didn’t give me any time to react. I needed to emergency name our companions, and I probably missed out on negotiating with different drivers who had signed contracts a couple of weeks earlier like Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris.”
Wolff was reflecting on the state of affairs nearer the time, and regardless of it leaving him with a tricky choice to make – ultimately selling Andrea Kimi Antonelli – he says it was not damaging to the connection between himself and Hamilton.
“It put us on the again foot, and that had a business affect. However do I take that personally? This was a enterprise choice. We’ve loved such a profitable journey collectively, and now now we have our personal goals. This didn’t even transfer the needle for me. I’m thick-skinned. I’ve had some fairly powerful moments in my life, and this doesn’t evaluate.”
