Formula 1: Mercedes have failed Hamilton, admits Wolff as he explains comment on ‘shelf-life’

Las Vegas, Nov 22 2024-

Toto Wolff has opened up about relations between Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton after the Briton’s challenging Sao Paulo Grand Prix weekend and admitted that the team might have failed the driver.

Hamilton endured a particularly painful event at Interlagos, where he failed to score a point in the Sprint, got knocked out of Q1 in the main qualifying session, and finished 10th in the Grand Prix – admitting to initially feeling like “I didn’t really want to come back”, said a report on the official website.

Meanwhile, the publication of a book charting life at Mercedes over the past year has gained plenty of media coverage, particularly a quote from Wolff stating that “everyone has a shelf-life” as Hamilton gets set to swap his long-time employers for Ferrari.

With the F1 paddock reconvening at the Las Vegas Strip Circuit, Wolff was quizzed on both topics during the Team Principals’ press conference and spoke at length about how things stand between Hamilton and Mercedes.

“Well, Lewis, we’ve all known for many years wears his heart on the sleeve,” said Wolff. “I think it was such a bad experience for him [in Brazil] – that whole race weekend, and particularly the Sunday – that there’s something that in a way wasn’t unusual. Now, this time was probably particularly bad.

“I think he and us as a team have been really doing well at holding on to working together. He announced that he’s going to Ferrari at the beginning of the year and I’m quite proud of what we have achieved to maintain the professional relationship like we are,” said Wolff. “We knew it was never going to be easy, and if the car is bad on such a day, then we have not given him a tool that is good enough to what he should have.”

Pushed by the media in the press conference to clarify his remark about the “shelf-life” of drivers and said his comments were taken out of context. “I’ve said it very often about this world particularly – it’s taking a toll on all of us,” Wolff commented. “We are doing more than 20 races a year, we fly around. What I said is that everybody has a shelf life.

“You don’t want to go from great to good and that doesn’t exclude the drivers. It is still something that I stand by. I’m asking myself this question all the time. I do it for the organisation and everybody around,” Wolff said in the press conference. (Agency)