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Horner: 'Wolff seemed to be the last person to know about Hamilton leaving'
Christian Horner believes that Toto Wolff "seemed to be the last person to find out" about Lewis Hamilton leaving Mercedes to join Ferrari for the 2025 Formula 1 season. The seven-time world champion will make the huge move from the German team to the Scuderia, a move that caught the paddock off guard, and Horner believes it was the Mercedes CEO who got caught out more than anyone else.
will never be friends. For years, the team bosses have bombarded each other with unfriendly comments and jabs. Speaking to The Daily Mail, Horner once again decides to take Wolff and his Mercedes team under fire.
Both team bosses do not get on too well, with comments and jabs constantly fired across from one to another throughout the years they have been at the head of their respective teams. While Horner spoke the The Daily Mail, he added yet another jab to the list.
By now, 2021 seems like an eternity ago. It was the year when Hamilton and Max Verstappen battled for the drivers' championship until the last lap of the last race in a stunning season, a battle eventually won simply by the Dutchman. That year, Mercedes did win the constructors' title, which has been their most recent title to date.
To the British newspaper, Horner says that Mercedes that they have had "a terrible run" since 2021: "They have had three very uncompetitive years, by their own standards. Lewis has decided to leave the team. Perhaps he doesn’t believe in the future that was presented to him and probably needs that revitalised motivation"
Horner knows what adversity is like
But, Horner says, he does not find "satisfaction from other people's misfortunes". From Red Bull's 2024 season alone, he knows all about adversity, and also the dry period where the Austrian team were miles behind the title challengers: "After 2013, we did not have a competitive engine but every year we were winning races and we were still punching above our weight, bar one year in 2015.
"When you are not delivering a team, the less you say, the more you focus on sorting your own issues out, is usually a better way of going about things. It is a competitive business and I get it. Toto had lost his driver to Ferrari a month earlier and he was telling the world that wasn’t happening. He seemed to be the last person to find out about it," Horner concluded.
This article was created in collaboration with Ludo van Denderen
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