Hamilton And Russell Have 'Equal Opportunity' At Mercedes Wolff Clarifies

Tuesday, 05 March 2024 at 10:30

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff asserted that both drivers have an equal opportunity going into the 2024 season.

With Lewis Hamilton leaving Mercedes at the end of the season, a few experts, including Martin Brundle, suggested that the team would "consciously, subconsciously favor George" at one point of the season.

The problem for the German team is that the seven-time World Champion has a lot of knowledge about their current generation of the car, and probably even the future one.

Drivers are an essential part of the development process as they give the best feedback to engineers, and at the end of the day, they have to deliver the result.

Max Verstappen also suggested the situation might become a bit "awkward" for Silver Arrows throughout the season as they will need to hide some development data from the 39-year-old.

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It was suggested that Hamilton would have to be left out of some crucial conversations, which might be what would give his younger teammate an advantage.

However, the team principal of the Mercedes F1 team, Toto Wolff, dismissed the notion of possibly favoring one driver over another as he told ORF:

"You shouldn't fool yourself. Of course there can be a certain dynamic when a driver changes teams, especially if things are not going so smoothly, but both drivers still get equal opportunities. We need two drivers who perform excellently."

On the one hand, Wolff asserted both drivers will get equal opportunity; on the other hand, we don't know whether that means Hamilton would be included in all the meetings.

But it is clear that Mercedes will need both of their drivers performing at their best if they want to finish at least second in the Championship in 2024 because Silver Arrows seemed to have the third or fourth fastest car after the first race of the season in Bahrain.