Toto Wolff has praised the way Lewis Hamilton handled a difficult 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, with the British racer failing to score a race victory for the first time in his sixteen-year career.
The Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team had a very under par 2022 campaign, with George Russell responsible for their only win in São Paulo and their only pole position in Hungary. The team slipped to third in the Constructors’ Championship after eight consecutive titles, and Hamilton ended the year a lowly sixth in the Drivers’ Championship, the lowest position of his career as the W13 car was a difficult one to work with.
Wolff, the Team Principal at Mercedes, feels Hamilton’s personality traits were extremely admirable even if the team were unable to deliver him a car to challenge for his eighth World Drivers’ Championship, and he handled a tough season well.
“Extremely tough, because we have given him a tool that wasn’t capable of winning,” Wolff said on Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid podcast. “On top of that, the drivers had a car that was unpredictable, unstable, good at times, not good at others – not really something you can work with and develop.
“But as a personality, how he has gone through the season is really admirable. There were times when the team felt down because of the non-performance and this is where he picked the people up and motivated them, and that is truly management and personality traits that I have not seen with a professional sportsman before.”
Wolff feels Hamilton’s ten years with Mercedes means he is more than just a driver at the Brackley and Banbury-based outfit, with the thirty-seven-year-old being seen as part of the management set-up despite it not being an official role or position he holds.
“Obviously there’s his involvement in developing the car, and his presence in the factory, but I think on the race weekends he has become such a senior figure,” Wolff added.
“[He’s] maybe a little bit like Michael [Schumacher] was back in the day, or I think about Tom Brady in [American] football teams, that you become more than just a player or just a driver. You are emotionally part of the team, and he definitely is.
“He’s not, like we called them in the past, a contractor – drivers come, get paid and they leave for the next better occasion. He’s been with the team now ten years [and] he’s a team member.”
