Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff violently attacked his Red Bull counterpart Christian Horner after his statements about an alleged change request from Lewis Hamilton and the much-discussed 2021 season finale.
“I just don’t know what drives the man. We just don’t understand how he comes up with such things,” rumbled Wolff in a media round on the sidelines of the last racing weekend of the year in Abu Dhabi with a view to the Hamilton case.
“The thing was that Christian wanted Lewis’s contact details through an agency we work with in order to talk about the cockpit. That’s how the whole thing happened,” said Wolff, describing the events from his perspective. “Lewis had an exchange with Christian, which he told me about straight away, and it wasn’t about a change, but just small talk.”
Horner told the Daily Mail that the Hamilton side had approached him about a possible move before his contract with Mercedes was extended until 2025. “They last asked at the beginning of this year whether there was interest,” the 50-year-old Briton was quoted as saying. Red Bull Motorsport boss Helmut Marko then confirmed Horner’s version to “oe24”.
Hamilton, however, objected vigorously to “Sky”. “No, I didn’t approach her. Christian sent me a message,” said the seven-time Formula 1 world champion. “I spoke to everyone on my team. Nobody contacted them, but they approached us.”
New exchange of blows because of the crazy Formula 1 finale 2021
In addition to the farce surrounding a possible Hamilton change, Toto Wolff was also annoyed by other current statements from Horner.
He recently opened up old wounds in a “A League of Their Own” episode and dealt them again against Mercedes with a view to the legendary Formula 1 season finale in 2021. Wolff, who was extremely upset after Max Verstappen’s crazy World Cup finish in the duel with Hamilton, “simply had a ‘bad hair day’,” Horner teased, among other things.
The Mercedes boss didn’t let that slide in the media round. “You won the season, be happy about it, be humble, enjoy it. Don’t come with comments about Abu Dhabi 2021 that are completely wrong,” Wolff countered his rival and spoke of a “question of character.”