Toto Wolff gives cold take on Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes exit: “Everyone has a shelf life”

Toto Wolff has claimed Lewis Hamilton’s decision to leave Mercedes for Ferrari ‘helped’ the team avoid having an awkward conversation about the seven-time world champion's future.

While Hamilton’s shock switch for F1 2025 was announced in February, new reaction to it has emerged in Mercedes’ new all-access book ‘Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane’.

The book follows the team throughout their inconsistent 2023 campaign - and the start of 2024.

Hamilton’s decision to leave Mercedes for Ferrari is also covered, with Wolff effectively suggesting they only offered the seven-time world champion a 1+1 deal due to concerns about his competitiveness into his 40s.

“There’s a reason why we only signed a one-plus-one-year contract,” Wolff said of Hamilton.

“We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life.

“So I need to look at the next generation. It’s the same in football. Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola. They anticipated it in the performance of their top stars and brought in junior players that drove the team for the next years.”

Wolff admitted the timing of Hamilton’s move meant Mercedes couldn’t negotiate with Lando Norris or Charles Leclerc as both drivers pre-empted the news by signing new deals with McLaren and Ferrari respectively.

Wolff ultimately opted to promote 18-year-old Andrea Kimi Antonelli as Hamilton's replacement for 2025.

“I absolutely had it on my radar that Lewis would go,” he added. “I just couldn’t understand why he’d change to another team before we knew if we were going to be competitive.

“It also didn’t give me any time to react, I had to emergency call our partners, and I possibly missed out on negotiating with other drivers who had signed contracts a few weeks earlier like Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris.

“[But] I like the situation,” he continues. “It helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport’s most iconic driver that we want to stop.”