Toto Wolff faces the challenge of managing the flow of information to a driver leaving the team – How he will deal with Lewis Hamilton in 2024
Lewis Hamilton’s decision to leave Mercedes at the end of the 2024 Formula 1 season and join Ferrari has not only shaken up the driver market and sparked speculation about his successor
The question also arises as to how Mercedes will deal with the Briton in their final year together in terms of internal communication. After all, he is moving to the competition. Will they still share all technical information or will Hamilton now automatically become the number two in the team?
When asked about this at a press conference on Friday, Toto Wolff asserted: “I think what I as team principal and all of us at Mercedes have always tried to do is to be transparent and fair. This will not change in 2024. We owe it to our principles and our view of racing.”
Hamilton was still sitting in the simulator today to prepare for the coming season with the new W15, reveals Wolff. However, there will inevitably be an overlap between the development work to improve the W15 and the design process for the W16 next year.
Hamilton will then be driving for rival Ferrari. Wolff is not yet quite sure to what extent this could affect the flow of information.
“As far as further developments are concerned, I think we’ll have to look at that,” he says. “The regulations will stay pretty much the same. As for 2025, we will assess later in the season what that means in terms of technical information. But it’s not something that worries me. “
“We have engineers who leave us and go to other teams, and the notice periods are sometimes only six months. So I have no doubts about Lewis’ integrity when it comes to passing on information,” said Wolff.
“We want to make sure that this is a successful season, a successful season for both drivers and a successful season for Mercedes, and we will all do our best to achieve that,” assures the Team Principal.
Nevertheless, Wolff admits that it is “definitely a new situation” for him and Mercedes to manage. “But it’s something that, if you focus on the really short-term, and that’s the race team, it doesn’t have a big impact on everything that’s going on on the development side.”
“I’m always interested in new and challenging situations. And the trade-off between the interests of Mercedes in 2024 and the interests of the drivers in 2025 is something that we will discuss openly at the beginning, how we deal with it and certainly come to a good outcome. “
