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Toto Wolff says the way he learned of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes exit was “painful”, because it didn’t leave him enough “time to react”.
Earlier this year, the Formula 1 world was shocked when the Italian media leaked the news that Lewis Hamilton signed with Ferrari for 2025.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was also caught off guard by the reports, and on the same day Mercedes came out with a press release confirming Lewis’ exit.
Now Toto says learning of Lewis’ exit in this manner was “painful” for him.
“What was painful is that I didn’t have time to react,” he told Sky Germany.
“It was actually the same day as the announcement. It was clear that it leaked from Ferrari. It all happened on the same day.
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“It did not give me enough time to do some stakeholder management, to call our sponsors and shareholders to explain what was going on.
“But I think of the motto ‘work hard, forgive quickly, apologise if you’re wrong’. And the personal relationship with Lewis certainly doesn’t suffer. I’ve come to terms with his choice now.”
In a separate interview with the Osterreich newspaper, Toto denied accusations that came out in an anonymous e-mail saying he was ‘vindictive’ in his dealings with Lewis in 2024.
“I am certainly not that. On the contrary, I am for fairness and I fight for fairness. And I speak to Lewis every day. He thinks we should take out the negativity as well.
“He has also experienced much worse abuse before and thinks we should ignore it [the accusations],” Wolff concluded.
