Wolff admits to ‘biting back’ at Hamilton in the past: I had to make a point

Toto Wolff praises Lewis Hamilton’s maturity, but confesses that there were some difficult moments in their first days of working together.

Toto Wolff, the head of Mercedes, has confessed that he was not afraid to “bite back” at Lewis Hamilton if he wanted to make a point during their early days of working together.

Wolff faced a rough four years managing the strained relationship between Hamilton and teammate Nico Rosberg after Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013.

Those days are long gone, and Wolff is full of praise for Hamilton’s maturity, having won six of his seven World Championships with the Brackley-based team.

However, during those early years, Wolff made certain that his driver knew the necessity of being respectful to the team.

“This is Mercedes. We have no place for the genius jerk,” Wolff said. “Even a superstar driver has to respect team values.

“But with Lewis, we’ve been eight years together now. He’s not an arrogant, spoiled little kid. He’s a mature racer who has won seven titles, six with us, so we can take those moments, it’s part of our role to be a trash bin for the driver sometimes.

“In the car, you can get very frustrated and emotional. You are racing at 200mph, in the rain, you have no idea about the overall picture of the race and decisions are being made that you cannot understand.

“In the early years I would bite back at Lewis. He was very young and I had to make the point that I wouldn’t allow the driver to bad-mouth the team. But we’ve been moved on from there a long time.”

Wolff, on the other hand, believes he would still take action now if he felt a driver was not showing this kind of respect to the team.

“I wouldn’t hesitate in the future if a driver talked bad about the team or wasn’t appropriate,” Wolff explained.

“I would first deal with it internally and if that didn’t yield results I would take the driver out of the car. On the bench, yes.

“I don’t think that would ever be Lewis. He’s a team member, not a contractor, a driver that comes and goes. We’ve been together since 2013. We know each other so well, there’s so much trust and respect.”

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