Toto Wolff says he doesn’t believe Lewis Hamilton mentally switched off from Mercedes during the F1 2024 season.

Hamilton struggled for pace and form alongside George Russell in his final season with the Brackley-based team, ahead of his move to Ferrari for this year.

Toto Wolff: Lewis Hamilton ‘too professional’ to check out

Hamilton ended up losing the qualifying battle to Russell, with the younger British driver outqualifying Hamilton 19 times to five, as well as winning 5-1 in Sprint Qualifying events.

But while Hamilton’s qualifying efforts led him to label himself as “no longer fast” by the end of the season, the seven-time F1 World Champion fared better on race day – he was outscored by only 22 points by his Mercedes teammate after the 24-race championship had concluded.

Hamilton’s race pace appeared largely intact as well, but the question mark over whether Hamilton’s age – he turned 40 this month – is starting to catch up with him, or whether he can rediscover his mojo with a new challenge at Maranello.

This week, F1 journalist Ben Hunt voiced his opinion that Hamilton’s pending move to Ferrari, the contract for which he signed a year ago, had distracted him in 2024.

“He’d handed his notice in at the start of the year, and he was serving his notice, he’d kind of checked out,” Hunt said on the James Allen on F1 podcast.

“And you know, once you’ve done that you’re never working at your same capacity. The drive isn’t there to deliver week in, week out, when you’ve done so.

“I think his head had been turned. He was looking at Ferrari, and what was unusual was the fact he said it, but it was an unusual circumstance for him as well, because he’d had that dip in motivation, and like I say, his focus had to switch to another team who he wasn’t driving for.

“So, you know, while he was running around behind that Ferrari, he was probably thinking about what he could bring to the table to make it even better. And it was kind of detracting from his usual thinking process.”

Speaking to Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff defended his former driver when he was asked whether he believes Hamilton’s best is behind him.

“This generation of car doesn’t suit Lewis. He brakes late and hits the car aggressively into the corners,” he said.

“The car and the tyres sometimes don’t forgive that. This is more noticeable in qualifying than in the race. There may have been other influencing factors as well.”

But Wolff poured cold water on the idea that Hamilton was no longer giving Mercedes his all: “I don’t think his head was in his new team yet. Lewis is too professional for that.”

With Hamilton chasing a record-breaking eighth Drivers’ World Championship title at Ferrari, history counts against him – only three drivers over the age of 40 have ever won the title, and the most recent of these – Sir Jack Brabham – was in 1966.

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A commonly-held view among retired former drivers is that qualifying abilities, outright single-lap pace, are the first signs of age catching up with a driver, while Wolff himself caused something of a stir when he made comments related to a sportsperson’s “shelf life” in Matt Whyman’s book ‘Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane’.

Wolff later clarified to BBC Radio 4 that the furore sparked by the comment had been a result of a misunderstanding of context.

“What I was referring to is that all of us, we age, and whether it’s in the car, on a pitch, or as a manager and entrepreneur, you have to, and this is what I’m trying to do with myself, understand am I going from great to good,” he said.

“Because good is not in Formula 1 anymore. Now, contrary to my own self-assessment, I think we see with Lewis that he’s very much there when the car is right. And we haven’t been able to give him that car for him to perform best and that is a frustration that we equally have in the team and for himself.

“But he’s very sharp. He’s different to when he was a 20-year-old, that’s certainly clear. His experience and his race craft is tremendous.”

Asked about the ‘shelf life’ comment, Wolff turned to the example of Fernando Alonso, who turns 45 years old this season, as being an indicator of how modern F1 drivers can have greater career longevity.

“That affects us all. But I believe that a top athlete like Lewis, who is fully focussed on one thing, can put it off for a long time,” he said.

“You can see it best in Fernando [Alonso]. With all his experience, he still drives a fast car. It’s similar with Lewis.”

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