The Mercedes CEO acted quickly after learning of Lewis Hamilton’s resignation 24 hours ahead of everyone else.
You are Toto Wolff, and it is Wednesday, January 31, in the morning.
As work continues at Brackley to prepare for the launch of the 2024 challenger, the W15, on February 14th, and then getting everything shipped off to Bahrain for testing and the first race, you have Lewis Hamilton scheduled for your customary pre-season catch-up breakfast later this morning.
Lewis just had his seat fitted in the new apparatus, and he will spend some time in the simulator on Friday to see if the third effort at a ground-effects vehicle has yielded noticeable results.
When he gets to your Oxford house, Hamilton informs you that he wants to join Ferrari for 2025 and wants to exercise the break option in his contract, which allows him to quit the club at the conclusion of the 2024 season.
This kind of news often makes its way into the mainstream media rather rapidly, so you and Mercedes know you have a maximum of maybe twenty-four hours to take charge of the narrative instead of letting it rule you.
It’s time to get everything in order and spring into action.
In keeping with the staggered release schedule used by Formula One teams, an all-hands meeting for Mercedes employees is scheduled for the afternoon of February 1st at Brackley. The official news is expected to be announced later that evening.
Mercedes’ statement, which includes your words and Lewis’s, is released at 18:59 UK time on February 1. Ferrari’s brief 21-word statement follows 13 minutes later.
The next morning, at 11 am, you get ready to take on the world’s media, including RacingNews365, in a session that is being supervised by your Chief Communications Officer, dependable lieutenant Bradley Lord.
Wolff’s first response
Throughout Wolff’s thirty minutes with the English-language press, one phrase stood out: “pragmatic.”
Swiftly following Hamilton’s announcement, Wolff detailed how he entered ‘what is best for Mercedes mentality’ and started strategizing the next steps immediately the news became known.
“My first thought was practical when he told me,” Wolff said to reporters, including RacingNews365.
“I wondered, ‘What does it mean?'” When are we going to communicate this? Which pressure points are there? What driver lineup decisions will we make and how will we handle the season moving forward?
“The Mercedes, the team’s mind kicked in and now having slept a few nights on it, it means our professional journey comes to an end, working together, but it does not mean that our personal relationship does, and I have found a friend.”
After implying that the team could not grant Hamilton’s desire for a long-term three-year contract during negotiations last summer, Wolff went to considerable measures to ensure Hamilton’s legacy at Mercedes. Hamilton ultimately signed a two-year contract that was really a one-year pact with the organization.
Whatever his inner thoughts may have been at having lost his star driver—statistically the best of all time—to Ferrari, he said all the right things and the Austrian never showed any signs of grief or pain.
However, Wolff also saw that Hamilton wanted to attempt something new, a fresh challenge, and what could be achieved by making a driver stay and perform his contract when his heart and mind were obviously elsewhere?
The home that Toto and Lewis constructed
In her novel The Night Circus, American novelist Erin Morgenstern stated that “every empire falls eventually; it is the way of things.”
The Mercedes empire has now collapsed, after the demise of McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, and Red Bull, with Hamilton’s departure from Mercedes serving as the ultimate symbolic event.
Power has now shifted from the Hamilton-Wolff-Mercedes dynasty to the Verstappen-Horner-Red Bull family.
Power has now shifted from the Hamilton-Wolff-Mercedes dynasty to the Verstappen-Horner-Red Bull family.
Mercedes has lost key technical personnel in recent years, but the hallmark of any great sports organization after an era ends is reinventing oneself and returning stronger.
However, it’s also critical to remember that Mercedes is larger than driver Lewis Hamilton.
Although he is the most well-known driver in the world, nostalgia for bygone eras only goes so far. Consider Ayrton Senna’s unsuccessful attempt to join Williams from McLaren in the 1990s or Ferrari’s 2006 forced departure of Michael Schumacher to make room for Kimi Raikkonen.
With Hamilton leaving, both sides will be freed from the shadow of Hamilton’s presence, enabling him to pursue his long-held ambition of racing for the Cavalino Rampante while Mercedes and Wolff can confidently start their rebuilding efforts.
Maybe it’s best for everyone in the end, excluding Carlos Sainz.
