Wolff: Hamilton has "driven stronger" since 5th title win

Toto Wolff believes Lewis Hamilton has driven stronger since he claimed his fifth world championship in Mexico. Hamilton won both the Brazilian and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix helping Mercedes seal their fifth title.

The Mercedes boss feels as if he felt the job was "incomplete" which gave him extra motivation to perform. Alongside his race wins, he's picked up two pole positions.

"He's actually driven stronger after winning the drivers' title," Wolff said in an interview on RaceFans.

"I feel he's so embedded in the team and integrated that the drivers' title felt incomplete, which for a driver is really strange because they are calibrated on the drivers' title. But he said it felt incomplete and that we needed to seal the teams' title. He just didn’t take his foot off the throttle until the very end, and that is somehow a new Lewis also.”

When Kimi Raikkonen pulled on the pit-straight, Hamilton and his Mercedes crew dived into the pits as soon as the VSC came on. It was a risky pit-stop, stopping with at least 10 laps left on the tyre he was on. Wolff explains the risk and claims it was actually the safest option.

“We knew that the super-soft [tyre] could go to the end. It could actually cover a whole race distance. We wanted to cover against an undercut or no VSC or Safety Car in the race later on [where] we would have lost a position. Knowing the tyre can go to the end with a little bit of management, it was the safer strategy," Wolff added.