Toto Wolff has claimed Lewis Hamilton’s determination to go away Mercedes for Ferrari ‘helped’ the crew keep away from having a clumsy dialog concerning the seven-time world champion’s future.
Whereas Hamilton’s shock swap for F1 2025 was introduced in February, new response to it has emerged in Mercedes’ new all-access e book ‘Inside Mercedes F1: Life within the Quick Lane’.
The e book follows the crew all through their inconsistent 2023 marketing campaign – and the beginning of 2024.
Hamilton’s determination to go away Mercedes for Ferrari can be coated, with Wolff successfully suggesting they solely supplied the seven-time world champion a 1+1 deal as a consequence of issues about his competitiveness into his 40s.
“There’s a motive why we solely signed a one-plus-one-year contract,” Wolff mentioned of Hamilton.
“We’re in a sport the place cognitive sharpness is extraordinarily vital, and I consider everybody has a shelf life.
“So I would like to take a look at the subsequent technology. It’s the identical in soccer. Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola. They anticipated it within the efficiency of their high stars and introduced in junior gamers that drove the crew for the subsequent years.”
Wolff admitted the timing of Hamilton’s transfer meant Mercedes couldn’t negotiate with Lando Norris or Charles Leclerc as each drivers pre-empted the information by signing new offers with McLaren and Ferrari respectively.
Wolff in the end opted to advertise 18-year-old Andrea Kimi Antonelli as Hamilton’s alternative for 2025.
“I completely had it on my radar that Lewis would go,” he added. “I simply couldn’t perceive why he’d change to a different crew earlier than we knew if we have 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.
“[But] I just like the state of affairs,” he continues. “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 need to cease.”
