F1 News: Toto Wolff Admits Relief Over Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes Exit

Saajan Jogia | Nov 10, 2024

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff / Mercedes Press Image

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff made a startling revelation, expressing that he welcomed Lewis Hamilton’s decision to join Ferrari in 2025, as it spares Mercedes from the challenging task of eventually having to tell the seven-time world champion that their journey together must come to an end.

Wolff believes that every driver has a “shelf life,” since an intense sport like Formula 1 demands superhuman levels of fitness and "cognitive sharpness." He hinted that Hamilton, at 39, might be reaching a stage where age could impact his performance.

As a result, Mercedes signed a 1+1-year contract with Hamilton in 2023, which would have taken him until the end of next year. Wolff's revelations were made in the recent book Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane, by Matt Whyman. He said:

“I absolutely had it on my radar that Lewis would go.

"I just couldn’t understand why he’d change to another team before we knew if we were going to be competitive.

“It also didn’t give me any time to react, I had to emergency call our partners, and I possibly missed out on negotiating with other drivers who had signed contracts a few weeks earlier like Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris.

“[But] I like the situation. It helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport’s most iconic driver that we want to stop.”

He added:

“There’s a reason why we only signed a one-plus-one-year contract,” adds Wolff in relation to the deal they signed with Hamilton in 2023.

“We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life.

“So I need to look at the next generation. It’s the same in football. Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola. They anticipated it in the performance of their top stars and brought in junior players that drove the team for the next years.”

Wolff then spoke on the High Performance podcast about the book, in which he discussed the controversial 2021 season, where Hamilton allegedly lost his eighth championship title in an "unfair" manner. He said:

“There's a moment every week where I think about it [Abu Dhabi 2021], but I mainly think about it because Lewis should have deserved to be the greatest of all time with eight world championship titles.

“You can argue all along about that year. I think Max and Lewis were deserving champions. There were instances during the year where Max lost some points that he shouldn't have lost. You look at Silverstone. You look at the crash in Monza both of them had. So, both deserving champions. But on that particular afternoon in Abu Dhabi, it was unfair.”