)
Toto Wolff believes Max Verstappen would enjoy the same freedom at Mercedes as he does at Red Bull Racing. The Mercedes team principal recalled a unique memory from Lewis Hamilton's time with the team to support his claim.
In recent years, there has been much speculation about Max Verstappen's future. It's known that Wolff and Verstappen held discussions in 2024 and 2025, but a deal never materialized. Now, Verstappen has signed with Red Bull until the end of 2030, meaning a collaboration between him and Mercedes is not on the agenda for now.
It's a common perception that Verstappen wouldn't receive the same freedom at Mercedes as he has at Red Bull. With his current team, he can engage in various other activities, including competing in GT races, managing his own racing team, and diverse pursuits like skiing. However, according to Wolff, it's not true that this wouldn't be possible at Mercedes.
"Every team is different. What I try to do is identify what makes a driver fast within our structure. What framework do we need to provide to extract the best performance from the driver? Part of that is obviously their well-being. And that's something I value. I've never put drivers in a box, saying, 'This is how you must behave,'" Wolff stated in a session for Dutch media.
"I remember Lewis Hamilton with his fashion collection back in the day. There was a race at Silverstone in 2017, 2018, or 2019, where he presented his collection with Tommy Hilfiger." Wolff then recalled an even better example involving three-time world champion Niki Lauda to illustrate the situation with Hamilton.
"He had a fashion show in Hong Kong, from where he FaceTimed us to express his gratitude that Mercedes had switched from Boss to Hilfiger, allowing him to have his own collection. He then flew from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Niki Lauda told me then: 'I can't understand why we're allowing this. We're racing in Singapore next week.'"
"Lewis then said he had to make another stop in New York and London. On Wednesday, he called me and said he would barely make it to Thursday for the first engineering meeting. I replied, 'Do me a favor. I'm already taking a lot of criticism because you're traveling the world in strange clothes,'" Wolff continued, before explaining that he told Hamilton he would absorb the criticism as long as he didn't disappoint him over the weekend.
Hamilton certainly didn't: "That was the moment he took that incredible pole position with a sensational lap and won the race, disappearing into the distance. After the race, he said, 'Good deal, right?' And Niki told me afterward, 'I'll never criticize him again, even if he flies to the moon.'"
In this sense, managing Hamilton's life off-track seems quite different from working with George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli. However, Wolff states that for him, things operate in exactly the same way, and this would also apply if Max Verstappen were to join his team.
"What I like about my role and our team is that we truly focus on driver performance. You can work with an annoying driver if they still embody the values we have in the team. Drivers can be very demanding and push hard, sometimes irrationally hard, but if that's necessary to extract the best performance, I'm willing to accept it."
"We are honest, we don't blame a specific person, we are transparent. These are the most important factors. And if it gets very annoying, I always tell my colleagues: 'Write it down in your little diary, and when you write a book in 10 years, you can include it, but right now, if it's necessary for us to be fast, we'll deal with it.'"
"So Antonelli is very different from George, and George is very different from Valtteri Bottas, and Valtteri is very different from Lewis. Similarly, Max is very different from all of them. He has his own way of working at Red Bull, and so far, it's been successful."
&format=webp)
,fit(112:112)&format=webp)
&format=webp)
&format=webp)