'It's horrible to negotiate with Wolff, he just disappears off planet Earth'

With Max Verstappen having removed himself from the driver market just before the summer break, reaffirming his stay at Red Bull through 2026, it seemed that all the pieces were in place and Russell’s renewal with Mercedes was imminent.

However, after the summer break and two more Grands Prix, Mercedes has yet to officially announce a new deal with the British driver, whose contract still expires at the end of the season.

Toto Wolff reiterated that the renewal of both drivers is now merely a formality: "I don't think it's going to be even a big announcement. It's just going to give you the heads up and say we've put a signature on the agreement."

As a guest on the Sky F1 show, Nico Rosberg—who knows a thing or two about negotiations with his former team principal—took the opportunity to playfully poke fun at the Austrian: ''It's horrible to negotiate with Toto. He just disappears off planet Earth when you're trying to get better terms. He just disappears and doesn't even let you talk with him. It's horrible. I suffered a lot.''

And about Russell, he said: ''Now it's George doing the kind of reverse to Toto. He's fighting Toto with his own medicine.''

The 2016 world champion also highlighted how sponsors play an important role in contract renewal negotiations: ''Nowadays these teams have so many sponsors asking so much, paying so much money, and the only way for a team to give back to a sponsor is, of course, logo space, which is limited.''

Finally, speaking about how long a renewal might take, Rosberg closed with a joke: ''The number can go up to like 60 days or something. 60 in 356 days. That's a lot of days. And some of those 60 days are split into half days. So it can actually be like 80 days. That's a lot when all we want to do is is go to the Nordschleife and go racing in GT3 cars.''