Toto Wolff has claimed 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lewis Hamilton’s decision to leave Mercedes for F💎errari ‘helped’ the team avoid having an awkward conversation about🔯 the seven-time world champion's future.

While Hamilton’s shock switch for F✅1 2025 was announced in February, new reaction to it has emerged in Mercedes’ new all-access b꧙ook ‘Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane’.

The book follows the t🤡eam 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 co▨ncerns 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.

“Soꦗ I need to look at the next gen🎃eration. 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 n𒈔ews 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 changeꦗ to another team before we knew if we were going to be competitive.

“It also didn’t give m♒e any time to react, I had to emergency call our partners, and I possibly missed out on negotiating with other drivers who had signed co🐻ntracts 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 st💟op.”