😮 F1 — Hamilton Leaving Mercedes for Ferrari! 😱

Jstas wrote: »

Uhhhhh....WRC?

Oh, wait, you said "equally extreme".

Yeah, I'll agree there.

WRC is WAY more extreme!

Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton sat down for breakfast in Wolff’s home in Oxford, UK, on Wednesday morning. The meeting had been in the diary for a while, pencilled in as their annual get-together.

Typically, this catch-up acts as their first face-to-face meeting after parting ways to head off for winter break and recharge ahead of the following season. They would then discuss their year ahead. But as Wolff said on Friday – speaking for the first time since the news broke that Hamilton was leaving after more than a decade to join Ferrari for 2025 – this breakfast turned out to be very different.

“What happened is that we got together for coffee in my place in Oxford, with him returning to the factory [this week], and he said to me that he has decided to race for Ferrari in 2025,” said Wolff. “That was basically it and we had a good hour of conversation and this is where we are.”

Wolff didn’t try to hide the fact he was surprised by the news. After all, Wolff said they were “very aligned” when they headed off on holidays last winter.

Even when he heard rumours a few days before, it didn’t trouble him too much as he admitted he was happy to wait until their prearranged meeting to discuss.

“In a way, Formula 1 and my previous life have made me imperious to surprises,” said Wolff. “I’ve been confronted so many times in my life with black swans that it was a surprise, but we went open-eyed into this phase of our relationship. We knew that it could be a year, it could be two; we knew that it would come to an end at the latest the end of 2025.

“The surprise was that I heard the rumours a couple of days earlier, but I wanted to wait for the breakfast we had planned. This is when he broke the news.

“But you know with me you can be very straightforward, because I’m straightforward too, so once he said: ‘this is what I’m trying to do’, that was the fact and I didn’t try to convince him otherwise, but just looking forward: ‘OK, what are we doing about communications? What’s the timing? How do we protect the team best? And how do we protect this 2024 year to be successful together with our two drivers without causing too much awkwardness?’”

Wolff and Hamilton became friends very quickly in their 12-year-long professional relationship, so you imagine it will have hurt the Mercedes team boss that his star driver wanted a break-up. Wolff, though, said it didn’t because he needed “to keep calm” and manage the 2024 season. His executive mindset kicked in.

“When he told me first, my next thought was pragmatic, what does it mean? When are we communicating this? What are the pressure points? How are we managing this season going forward, and what is it we are going to do in terms of driver line-up,” he said.

“That was the mind, the Mercedes, the team’s mind, kicked in. Now, having slept a few nights on it, it means that our professional journey comes to an end, working together, but it doesn’t mean that our personal relationship ends.
“I’ve found a friend, we’ve built a relationship over the last 10 years, and he faced a very, very difficult situation, taking a decision of where to drive, maybe for the first time since 10 years without being able to brainstorm with me. And therefore, I will always respect the difficulty of the situation that he faced. And in the future, we will discuss whether this could have been done in a different way or not. But I hold no grudge.”

When Mercedes came to renew Hamilton’s contract, there were differences in what each side wanted. Hamilton is understood to have been keen for a three-year deal, Mercedes wanted to offer only one to keep their options open.
They knew that, at some point, they would have to switch Hamilton out to bring the next generation in. So, they agreed on a one plus one contract, a guaranteed year with options on both sides to extend it into the next season. It was a risky approach, but one that made sense given what Mercedes was trying to manage.

“When we decided Lewis and us to go for a short-term contract, we knew why we were doing it,” said Wolff. “It is to leave him options open and at the same time us. It’s an exciting situation at the end of 2024 with some drivers becoming available, others just signed a few weeks ago (Charles Leclerc extended with Ferrari and Lando Norris did the same with McLaren) so these ones would have been opportunities.

“If it was six weeks earlier, there would have been more opportunities, but it is what it is. But in 2025 and beyond, the driver market is very interesting and we need to look out to the future. Who is it that we can partner with George? What’s the best combo? What’s the best combination? And I think in terms of the drivers who could hopefully join, that could join, there are a variety of options. At that stage, I wouldn’t want to commit to 'this is when we’re going to do it'. I want to take my time.”

Geoff4rfc wrote: »

I'll disagree with you there. While I take nothing away from F1 racing, Moto GP is pretty intense but they are on 4 stroke engines. Prior to the displacement change, the bikes were 500cc 2 strokes.

There were only handfuls of men that could ride those bikes at championship levels