Toto Wolff shares why he never confronted Lewis Hamilton about negotiating with Ferrari behind his back
Toto Wolff said the reason why he never confronted Lewis Hamilton about the secret negotiation with Ferrari was because he didn't want the driver to lie to him. Before the news became official, the driver went to the Mercedes boss' home to tell him about his move.
Wolff, however, was already aware of Hamilton's move. The former had been informed by Carlos Sainz two weeks prior and also had calls from different drivers for the Mercedes seat. During all of this, however, the Austrian never confronted the Brit or asked him why he didn't tell him about the secret negotiations he was having with Ferrari.
When questioned during the interview with The Guardian as to why he didn't confront Hamilton about this, Wolff said that he didn't want the driver to lie to him. He was quoted as saying:
“I did not want to put him in a situation where he had to lie to me because at that stage the contract wasn’t signed.”
Describing the moment when Lewis Hamilton told Toto Wolff about his move, the Austrian said:
“I saw the pain in him to tell me. My feeling was ‘Why now? When are we announcing this?’ He said: ‘Well, it’s leaking.’”
Toto Wolff clarifies Lewis Hamilton 'shelf life' comment
Talking about Lewis Hamilton's departure, Toto Wolff had remarked in the recently released Mercedes book that every athlete had a shelf life. The comments were not received well by a lot of fans and were considered a dig at Hamilton's advanced age. In a recent interview with The BBC, Wolff clarified the comment:
“That was taken a little bit out of context. What I was referring to is that all of us, we age, and whether it’s in the car, on a pitch, or as a manager and entrepreneur, you have to, and this is what I’m trying to do with myself, understand am I going from great to good. Because good is not in Formula 1 anymore."
He added:
“Now, contrary to my own self-assessment, I think we see with Lewis that he’s very much there when the car is right. And we haven’t been able to give him that car for him to perform best, and that is a frustration that we equally have in the team and for himself. But he’s very sharp. He’s different to when he was a 20-year-old, that’s certainly clear. His experience and his race craft is tremendous.”
This weekend, Mercedes and Hamilton begin what would be their last three races together. The driver and the team have achieved the most that any partnership has in the history of the sport and that is a credit to the kind of dominance the combination had over the sport.