Shop
Wolff is quoted in Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane as suggesting Hamilton’s departure from the team saved him from being fired.
“I absolutely had it on my radar that Lewis would go,” says Wolff.
“I just couldn’t understand why he’d change to another team before we knew if we were going to be competitive.
“It also didn’t give me any time to react, I had to emergency call our partners, and I possibly missed out on negotiating with other drivers who had signed contracts a few weeks earlier like Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris.
“I like the situation,” he added.
“It helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport’s most iconic driver that we want to stop.”
However, his comments did stop there and he suggested Hamilton was being deliberately retained on a short-term contract.
“There’s a reason why we only signed a one-plus-one-year contract,” Wolff explained
“We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life.”
At the end of the season, Hamilton will leave Mercedes for Ferrari in place of Carlos Sainz.
It brings to an end a relationship with the manufacturer that stretches back to his karting days, and with whom he’s claimed six of his seven world titles.
Hamilton is the most successful driver in F1 history, with 105 race wins, 84 of the with the Mercedes factory team and all of them powered by the German company.
His most recent success came at the Belgian Grand Prix, when he inherited victory when team-mate George Russell was disqualified for an underweight car.
Just two races prior he snapped the longest winless streak of his career when he won the British Grand Prix, ending a dry spell that dated back to the 2021 Saudi Arabian GP.
Noting those performances, and the team’s own inconsistent form, Wolff has moved to explain the comments he made in the book.
“That was taken a little bit out of context,” Wolff told BBC Radio 4.
“What I was referring to was that all of us age, whether it is in a car, on a pitch, or as a manager or entrepreneur.
“And that is what I am trying to do with myself, understand, am I going from great to good, because good is not in Formula 1 anymore.
“Contrary to my own self-assessment, I think we see with Lewis that he’s very much there when the car is right.
“We haven’t been able to give him that car to perform his best, and that is a frustration that we share equally 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, but his experience and his race craft is tremendous.”
Hamilton has just three races left with Mercedes, the next of which is the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Track action begins on Thursday evening local time (Friday afternoon AEDT).
