Toto Wolff: Lewis should never be written off

      Since this season, Lewis Hamilton has been driving for Ferrari, and so far his business is not going well. After ten stages of the season, he occupies only the 6th place in the personal standings, and his best result remains 4th place in the Grand Prix of Emilia-Romagna - apart from winning the sprint in Shanghai.

      Toto Wolff, taking part in the Bloomberg Hot Pursuit podcast, spoke out in defense of his former racer, with whom the Mercedes team had achieved such remarkable success in previous years. 

      "You can't forget how to fly so quickly," said the head of the Stuttgart group's factory team. – He performed well in 2021. Then the technical regulations changed, and it became a little more difficult, but Lewis still performed at a very high level.

      When a rider just changes teams, they can't suddenly lose their skills. But everyone needs time to adapt to another car that requires a different approach to piloting, to a new engineering team that still needs to work together. And only then should he get involved in the process of constantly modernizing the car, trying to make it more suitable for his driving style.

      Ferrari is a completely Italian team, and then a Brit has infiltrated it, and it should take some time. In addition, it is typical for Lewis that at the early stage of the season he first needs to feel the courage, but he spends the second half of the championship very strongly. In general, he should never be written off." 

      At the same time, Wolff stressed that he maintains friendly relations with Lewis even now, when the seven-time world champion became a rival of Mercedes: "We will always miss someone like him. We remain great friends because we promised each other that this would continue to be the case.

      We are rivals on the race tracks, but outside of them we spend time together, travel together, because I don't want our friendship, which lasted for so many years, to end."