Wolff didn't want to miss out on Antonelli like he did with Verstappen
F1 News
Max Verstappen could have been a Mercedes driver. However, Toto Wolff, with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as the German team's main drivers, didn't see the sense in putting an underage Verstappen in the car, and with the level of domination Mercedes was exerting over the rest of the field the Austrian felt it was not worth the risk. A decision which he now seems to rue to this day.
Red Bull Racing, however, pushed by its Advisor, Helmut Marko, was prepared to offered what Mercedes didn't, and the rest is history. Wolff encountered a similar situation last year, with young Mercedes prodigy, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, knocking at the F1 door, but once again, the German team didn't have a vacant seat to provide to its young driver. However, following Lewis Hamilton's "curve ball" deal with Ferrari for 2025, announced in early 2024, Wolff didn't have to make the tough decision after all.
'Didn't want to miss out on Antonelli like I did Verstappen'
"It was a curve ball thrown at us, and it still feels weird that he’s gonna wear Ferrari overalls and drive the red car. It’s just a bit surreal," said the Austrian in the podcast Armchair Experts, later hinting at a lingering regret over having missed out on Verstappen, a driver he tried to sign for the Brackley-based team throughout most of the 2024 season as well.
"But we had this 17-year-old [Antonelli] in the pipeline. I didn’t want to miss out on him like I did with Max back in the day. I didn’t have a car [for Verstappen]. so that is all falling into place," Wolff said, before concluding: "I didn’t want to do the decision, as Mercedes, letting the greatest champion ever go."
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