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Toto Wolff says he did not talk to any other drivers besides Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, during their contract negotiations.
On Thursday, Mercedes announced that Lewis Hamilton and George Russell will continue driving for the team at least until the end of 2025 season.
Since there was a lot of media speculation floating around for months, regarding a supposed ‘delay’ in Lewis’ contract negotiations, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff decided to joke around with the media.
“Yeah, we already signed in May, but we didn’t tell anybody,” Toto jokingly told Sky Sports F1.
“We thought – keep a bit of suspense! But, in all seriousness, we knew that we had an agreement not only emotionally, but also on paper many weeks ago.”
“But it was, you get lawyers on the case, and they find stuff – letters that were written wrong and so on.”
Another rumours making the rounds for months said that Toto Wolff was talking to Charles Leclerc, among others, about a possible Mercedes seat (which we always labelled as completely unsubstantiated).
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The Austrian now says he did not talk to anybody other than Hamilton and Russell.
“Lewis is the all-time best driver in Formula 1, and in terms of the records he held and championships like Michael [Schumacher].
“The combination with George who is still in his very early years, his optimum, they push each other.
“They have sometimes different approaches to setup and at the end, the same benefits. It’s a great relationship.
“I’ve always said it when we renew, I don’t want to flirt outside if I have a good relationship.
“Only when I see that things are not going in the right direction, then I would test the markets, but I didn’t do it,” Wolff concluded.
