Wolff admits: 'After Verstappen and Hamilton crash at Silverstone I acted wrong'

F1 News

Wolff acknowledges mistake with Verstappen at Silverstone 2021
24 August at 19:35
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  • Nicole Mulder

Toto Wolff, who has since made peace with the fact that Max Verstappen will not be coming to Mercedes next year, admits that he made a mistake that caused the relationship between the two sides to deteriorate significantly in the past. By this, the team principal is referring to the infamous crash between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone in 2021, which landed the Dutchman in hospital.

Wolff has made no secret during the first half of the 2024 season that Verstappen is his absolute top favourite to replace Hamilton, who leaves for Ferrari next year. That will not happen in 2025 for now, although Wolff hopes to bring the Dutchman to the German Formula One team in the future.

There has long been no question of a feud. However, relations between them did cool down sharply for a while as a result of the bitter rivalry in the 2021 F1 season. Tensions reached a boiling point when Verstappen was tapped off the track by Hamilton at Copse corner, after which the Dutchman crashed into the tyre stacks at high speed.

Wolff admits mistake at Silverstone 2021

Wolff admits he acted wrongly after the incident. "We had a bad relationship for a period and that started at Silverstone 2021. That season took its toll. It was so intense and we all felt things were not right between us. Where it really went wrong was at Silverstone, where I made a mistake," he is quoted by the AD.

"I did not call Jos on the day of the incident and I should have done so," acknowledges the Mercedes team principal. He said he did not because Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan would have said that Max was fine - and also because he himself was angry about the situation. "I have a child myself who does karting, so I know how you feel as a father at such times. I lost sight of that that day."

The 52-year-old Austrian says that things did not sit well between the two parties for a while afterwards, but that he later got back "on speaking terms" with Jos Verstappen. In doing so, both are said to have been transparent about mistakes made by both sides. "This sport demands so much from you that sometimes you look at events with tunnel vision. That happened in 2021 and that was not good," Wolff said.

This article was written in collaboration with Kada Sarkozi


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