Wolff Drops Biggest Hint So Far On Hamilton's Successor And Corrects Rumors

Saturday, 08 June 2024 at 20:27

Toto Wolff indirectly confirmed Mercedes's next driver while speaking to the media ahead of the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix.

Carlos Sainz has seemed to be one of the best, if not the best, drivers on the market for months now, yet he still hasn't secured a seat on any team.

One by one, his best options slowly go away, and while there is a free seat in Mercedes from 2025, the team principal of Silver Arrows, Toto Wolff, suggested he will not be taking him when talking to Sky Germany in Canada. He said:

"We just want to concentrate on Kimi, that is our future, young drivers. We want to commit to that, to young drivers, and that is what we've told Carlos."

While explaining why we most probably won't see the 29-year-old driver in Hamilton's seat at Mercedes next year, Wolff also indirectly confirmed that Andrea Kimi Antonelli for the second seat alongside George Russell.

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Antonelli has been the subject of many rumors and speculations in the last couple of weeks. One speculation was that he supposedly outperformed Russell with Mick Schumacher during the most recent testing session at Silverstone Circuit.

Mercedes already addressed rumors suggesting that the times of the three drivers could not be compared based on different programs and track conditions.

However, Wolff asserted his current 26-year-old driver was clearly the fastest one (as you would expect from a driver with more than five years of experience in F1). He added:

"They both completed the program that we gave them, and the performance was exactly what we expected, Some of this talk that Kimi was faster than George and much faster than Mick is absolute nonsense. They all drove different programs."

"All three were equally fast. George was by far the fastest, and that's the way it should be, but we ran our programs. It was not about setting fast times."