Apart from a pole position in Hungary and a couple of podiums here and there, Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton haven’t really made headlines in terms of their on-track performances this season. Instead, the stories coming out of Brackley have been more focused on Hamilton’s future in Formula 1, seeing as his contract with Mercedes expires at the end of 2023, and he still hasn’t signed an extension. But according to Hamilton, “There is no negotiation left. It is all just small bits.” And with Toto Wolff reporting the same, it’s almost certain Hamilton is set to stay at Mercedes till 2025. And as happy as Wolff would be to have avoided a “divorce,” there’s something else he needs to prioritize. 

F1’s summer break would be incomplete without the silly season. So as the summer break commenced, F1 journalist Joe Saward stirred a few theories up about driver movements in his blog. And Hamilton played a leading role in it. He wrote, “The big question in the driver market in F1 at the moment is still whether Lewis Hamilton will go on racing. It is clear that this is the intention, but it is not clear how long a new deal would be for.”

“Mercedes needs to know this so as to plan for the future because if Lewis is going to stop in 2025 (for example), the team needs to be in the market NOW,” Saward added. With the new regulations coming in 2026, Mercedes would want to go into the year with a clear plan. But if Hamilton does decide to leave after 2025, the Brackley team could spend 2025 fretting over who it could recruit to replace the seven-time champion. And that would be less than ideal.

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To avoid such a situation, Toto Wolff needs to know for sure how long Hamilton plans to stay, and if it isn’t past 2025, Mercedes needs to be on the lookout starting right now. But before shifting his focus to Hamilton’s replacement, there’s one thing Wolff can be content with for now: He most likely has prevented a divorce neither of them would’ve wanted. 

How did Toto Wolff prevent Lewis Hamilton from leaving?

The first time Wolff and Hamilton went through a rough patch in their partnership was after the 2016 season when Hamilton’s then-teammate Nico Rosberg pipped Hamilton for the championship in the title decider at Abu Dhabi. Wolff mended fences back then, and he had to do it again recently, especially after a little unrest during the Austrian GP when Hamilton complained of the W14’s slow pace, and Wolff just said, “Please drive the car.”

In an interview where he discussed Hamilton’s contract negotiations, he said, “The kind of analogy I gave to him is that also I have arguments with Susie [Wolff, his wife]. Even if we shout [at] each other, which doesn’t happen a lot, but even if we have these arguments, there’s never thought of divorcing. And that’s why I said to him ‘I don’t want to divorce you, and neither do you, because I want the best racing drivers in our cars and you want to have the best car’.”

Do you think Lewis Hamilton will stay on F1 post-2025?

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