The surprise area where Toto Wolff is still guiding Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton may no longer be a Mercedes driver, but that does not mean he and team boss Toto Wolff went their separate ways.

Rather, the pair are still on very good terms and in regular contact, Wolff now finding a new role in Hamilton’s journey as something of a love life consultant.

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff bond remains strong

Ahead of the 2024 season getting underway, Mercedes were rocked by the announcement that their seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton was to join Ferrari from F1 2025, leaving a full season to navigate knowing it was the final for this record-breaking partnership.

Wolff, in a Wall Street Journal interview, acknowledged that this created the threat of a “borderline hostile” relationship developing at Mercedes with Hamilton, but minus some blunt assessments of himself and the Mercedes car in a challenging final season for the F1 icon, the peace was kept.

And while Hamilton is now a Ferrari driver, Wolff still has a role to play in Hamilton’s life, or love life to be more specific.

“I tried to be very open and say, ‘Listen, on the racetrack, we want to beat you. No doubt about that. But it’s been 12 years that we have been in this relationship. We trust each other,’” said Wolff, Mercedes team principal and one-third owner.

“I’m living a different life through his eyes, you know, he shows me his flirts and who he dates, and [asks], ‘Should I go for this girl or not?’ And I’m saying, ‘Yes, you should, and tell me how it was!’”

Hamilton remains on such good terms with Mercedes to the point that he still visits his former team on the F1 road, Wolff revealing Hamilton “pops up in the office on the weekend! He speaks with the engineers, gets some food.”

In addition to that, “after many Grand Prix, he travels back with me. So we have the old gang: Valtteri Bottas, George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and me flying from the races.”

Latest F1 2025 head-to-head standings from PlanetF1.com

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Hamilton has not enjoyed the start to Ferrari life which he had hoped for. A record 105-time grand prix winner, Hamilton is yet to make the podium on a Sunday as a Ferrari driver, an achievement which team-mate Charles Leclerc has pulled off four times already in F1 2025.

Despite that, the gap between the Ferrari drivers in the Championship remains respectable, Hamilton sat P6, one position and 16 points behind Leclerc.

Wolff recently weighed in on Hamilton’s struggles to get his Ferrari career properly up and running.

“You don’t unlearn driving that quickly,” Wolff said of Hamilton on the Bloomberg Hot Pursuit podcast.

“In 2021, he was great. Then the regulations changed, and it got a little more difficult, but he was still performing at a very high level.

“Just by changing teams, suddenly you don’t lose your skills.

“Everybody needs a period of adaptation: different car, different DNA in how the vehicle drives, a new engineering team that you need to start working together.

“Then you have to be involved in the continuous development of the car so it suits your driving style.

“It’s an all-Italian team, and he’s a British guy parachuted in there. And that takes time.

“Also, we’ve seen a bit of a pattern that Lewis, at the beginning of the season, needs to find his mojo and the second half of the season has always been very strong.

“So don’t ever write Lewis Hamilton off.”

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