Pep Guardiola inspiration behind Toto Wolff not persuading Lewis Hamilton to stay

Toto Wolff says advice from Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola inspired his decision not to try and convince Lewis Hamilton to stay at Mercedes.

Seven-time F1 world champion Hamilton announced in February that he would be leaving Mercedes at the end of 2024 to complete a blockbuster switch to Ferrari, having opted to activate a break clause in his current 1+1 contract extension.

Rather than trying to change Hamilton’s mind upon being informed of the news, Wolff instead elected to follow a philosophy used by Guardiola.

“I think if somebody decides to go, then you need to let them go,” Wolff told the High Performance podcast.

“I had a chat with Pep Guardiola a long time ago and he’s a friend. I said ‘what do you do if this or that player leaves’ and he said ‘what do you mean I do?’ I said ‘well do you try to convince them to stay?

“He said: ’No, if somebody thinks he can play elsewhere better, or earns more, then you have just got to let them go’.

“And that is something I embrace in the same way here. If somebody wants to go, then let’s make it as good as possible for each of the parties.”

Wolff insisted that Hamilton’s news, while coming as a shock, was ultimately not difficult to process.

“I had much worse in my life, happening, like real drama and trauma,” he said. “This is not even moving the needle.”

“It’s just a new situation. It has risks and opportunities, risks in the sense of how do I inform the sponsors as quickly as possible?

“Because it was leaking… And on the other side, what are we doing about next year?”

Explaining the decision to promote junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli as Hamilton’s replacement for 2025, Wolff added: “Because of my more difficult upbringing I don’t actually struggle to take decision.

“That’s actually something that comes quite naturally to me. There is an instinctive response, internal response that I have within myself and that was literally ‘that’s the opportunity for Kimi’.

“On the other side, there was an F2 season to go and lots of testing for Kimi, so you have to in a way stand back and say ‘hold on a minute, that’s your instinctive reaction, so that’s probably going to happen, but there could be breaking points where you should be rationally and logically acting’.

“Picking the brains of all the good people that I work with here in Mercedes is important before coming to a final decision. That decision was made was with Ola [Källenius, CEO of Mercedes-Benz) and in the room with Gwen [Lagrue], who runs our junior programme, James Allison, Bradley Lord and just to confirm my first initial instinct.”