The duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg was the epitome of rivalry in Formula 1. The F1 world has seen a different level of competitiveness during the four years they spent together at Mercedes. However, team boss Toto Wolff exactly knew how to control them and uphold the name of the organization, even if he had to throw out Hamilton for the cause.
Talking about this, Wolff conveyed during an interview in the High-Performance Podcast last year, “When the events of 2014, where I felt there was some selfish behavior. I said the next time you come close to the other car, your teammate, you think about the Mercedes brand. You think about every single individual in the team, you think about Dieter Zetsche, the CEO of Mercedes.”
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“Then probably that’s gonna change the way you act, you’re not gonna put your teammate into the wall, and I always made clear that if this were to happen regularly, and I would see a pattern, then I have no fear in making somebody miss races.”
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Hamilton and Rosberg were with the Silver Arrows from 2013 and raced together until the German departed from the team after the 2016 F1 season. In these four years, the German team saw enough for Wolff to decide on something as harsh as suspending a driver, namely Lewis Hamilton, after his on-track action against Nico Rosberg.
Toto Wolff laid down instructions for the Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg to follow
Toto Wolff arrived at the team in 2013, when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were already big shots in Formula 1. Wolff, who just joined the team saw the two big guns of the Silver Arrows go against each other and often hand the advantage to rival teams.
3 years on, the Lewis Hamilton-Nico Rosberg total wipeout Mercedes crash at the #SpanishGP never gets any less dramatic, does it?
Watch the 2019 race live only on Sky F1 this weekend: https://t.co/GZsL7bbnB2#F1 #SkyF1 pic.twitter.com/L0JLaKunPR
— Sky Sports F1 (@SkySportsF1) May 9, 2019
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Trying to grab the hold of the team, the Austrian executive took things into his own hands. In the same interview, he said, “I was able to create an environment where they had to respect the team. Sometimes with an iron fist, or iron grip.”
“They understood that they couldn’t let us down, they couldn’t let Mercedes down,” further asserted the 50-year-old Austrian. In the four seasons of rivalry, Hamilton got the better of Rosberg thrice in 2013, 2014, and 2015, while the German snatched the title away from the Briton in 2016.
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Even since Rosberg left the team, The Brackley-based team never saw teammates fighting each other on track. While Valtteri Bottas was largely the team’s second driver behind Lewis Hamilton, newly appointed George Russell never actually got the chance to go against the Briton in 2022.
