It is well known that Mercedes switched Lewis Hamilton’s crew to Nico Rosberg’s side of the garage after the Briton wrapped up the title in America last year, now the world champion has deliberately hinted that the move irked him but his team boss Toto Wolff is having none of it.
Discussing his ten points deficit to Rosberg in the title race, Hamilton told media at Sepang, “If something changes when it doesn’t really need to, it can have all sorts of effects. The biggest effect it can have on the driver is psychologically.”
When told of Hamilton’s faux pas, Wolff was adamant, “We will not allow two teams to exist within one team. There is no Team Hamilton and no Team Rosberg. We need to develop people. If they are capable of growing, they might have another job and this is part of reshuffling which is permanently going on behind the scenes.”
“I perfectly understand Lewis. In any sports team it can have a psychological effect depending on who you work with. But no football player would tell Jose Mourinho or Pep Guardiola who he’d like to play with. It’s the manager’s call to decide who is in the squad.”
“You might be playing with somebody you like or somebody you don’t like, but it is about the squad winning. I understand that as a driver you want the perfect cocoon but it’s about how we can develop 1,500 people — not one.”
“A winning streak never lasts. At a certain stage it swings in the other direction. That’s happened in the last couple of years. We have given them an equal opportunity.”
“We have reliability issues but if you are pushing boundaries you are going to cross them. In 2014, Nico’s car failed at the last race in Abu Dhabi and Lewis won the championship. So after four years together, it’s pretty balanced out between the two,” concluded Wolff.
Hamilton’s crew were shifted to Rosberg’s car after the United States Grand Prix, upon which the German went on to win the last three races of last season and the first four this year.
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