Wolff: Verstappen would have the same freedom at Mercedes as at Red Bull

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about Max Verstappen’s future. It is known that Wolff and Verstappen sat down together in 2024 and 2025, but a deal never materialised. Verstappen has now signed with Red Bull until 2030, meaning a collaboration will not be on the cards for the time being.

A common refrain is that Verstappen wouldn’t get the freedom at Mercedes that he gets at Red Bull. At Red Bull he can engage in all sorts of other activities, including his own GT races, running his own racing team, and activities like skiing. According to Wolff, however, it’s not true that this wouldn’t be possible at Mercedes.

"Every team is different, I think what I'm trying to do is to identify what is it that makes the driver fast in our structure. What kind of framework do we need to provide to extract the best performance of the driver? And part of that is obviously the well being. And that's something that I'm keen on. I have never put drivers in a box and have said, 'this is how you need to be,'" Wolff said in the session for the Dutch media, including GPblog.

“I remember Lewis Hamilton with his fashion collection back in the day. There was this Silverstone race in ’17, ’18 or ’19, where he launched his Tommy Hilfiger collection.” Wolff then remembers an even better example involving three-time world champion Niki Lauda to illustrate the situation with Hamilton.

"And then he said he needed to do another stopover in New York and London. And he calls me on Wednesday and says it will be touch and go arriving on the Thursday for the first engineering meeting. And I said 'Do me a favour. I'm already getting lots of shit here for you doing a 360 around the world in funky clothes," Wolff continued, before explaining he told Hamilton he'd take the criticism so long as he didn't disappoint at the weekend.

Hamilton certainly didn’t: "This is when he had this unbelievable pole position that was a sensational lap and he won the race disappearing in the distance and after the race he said, 'that was a good deal, no?" And Niki said to me afterwards, 'I'm never going to criticise anymore, even if he flies to the moon.''

Managing Hamilton’s life off the track seems, in that regard, quite different from dealing with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli. Still, Wolff states that for him it works exactly the same, and that this would also be the case if Max Verstappen were to become part of his team.

For now, however, a collaboration between Verstappen and Mercedes doesn’t seem likely. The Dutchman signed a new contract with Red Bull Racing that keeps him at the Austrian team through 2030. Still, in this interview—in a part that previously appeared on GPblog—Wolff already indicated that he doesn’t rule out working together someday