Toto Wolff’s “picture our rear wing” warning to Lewis Hamilton over Ferrari move

Toto Wolff has revealed he told Lewis Hamilton to “picture our rear wing” when he makes the move to Ferrari from Mercedes for the 2025 F1 season.

Hamilton shocked the sporting world by deciding to join Ferrari alongside Charles Leclerc from next year.

The move was announced ahead of the season in early February, catching everyone - including his current team boss - by surprise.

It brings an end to Hamilton’s 12-year stint with the team following a remarkable run of success, winning six of his seven world titles with Mercedes.

Reflecting on Hamilton’s decision to leave, Wolff told Fox News Australia that he warned the seven-time world champion that he’d be seeing a lot of Mercedes' rear wing in 2025.

“I think first I can’t imagine him in red,” he said. I don’t think it suits him, but I think that picture is going to be interesting.

“And then I told him, you’ve got to really picture our rear wing because that’s the perspective you’re going to have.”

Wolff recounted the moment Hamilton told him of the decision, during a normal visit to have coffee ahead of the new season.

“I think it was difficult for him to really tell me because he left for the Christmas holiday and was Mercedes forever,” he added.

“Normally that’s a time where we don’t speak a lot because he’s gone, because otherwise we’re speaking every day. And then he came back and said, can we have a coffee? He came for the coffee, that’s the normal thing we’re doing when the season kicks off, and he said, ‘I’m leaving to Ferrari’. And I said, ‘really?’

“And not that it shocked me, because we knew that we have a short-term contract, but the timing at the beginning of the season. I said, ‘why at the beginning of the season?’ He said he just wanted to have it out and not have it as a burden, emotional burden.

“And then you got to stay pragmatic after five minutes [of] shock and disbelief it was like, ‘okay what are we doing announcement, what are we doing going forward into the season?’ And he said, ‘well the announcement is a tricky thing because I think it’s leaking’, so it didn’t give me lots of options.”