Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says a crucial conversation he had with Lewis Hamilton at the end of 2016 not only salvaged their working relationship during a then difficult period, it also instilled a strong friendship between the two men.
In the past, Wolff has often said that his strong rapport with Hamilton was one of the reasons behind Mercedes and its star driver's extraordinary success in F1.
But at the end of a grueling 2016 season, after Hamilton's defeat in the world championship at the hands of his teammate Nico Rosberg at the very last race in Abu Dhabi, the communication between the Briton and his team boss became frosty, perhaps as a result of Wolff's efforts to manage to the best of his ability the fierce rivalry that had set in at the team between the Hamilton and Rosberg camps.
In an in-depth interview with The Times, Wolff revisited a day in late December of 2016, when a conversation in the Austrian's kitchen turned into a turning-point moment for the pair.
©Mercedes
"We met at the Christmas party in my home in Oxfordshire that December, reluctantly," Wolff recalled.
"I said we need to decide whether we want to work together or not. ‘You want to win as a driver, I want to win as a team. Sometimes our different agendas are going to lead to conflict and we need to decide whether we can cope with that situation’.
"We were in my kitchen. I said to him, and Susie [Wolff] didn’t much like this analogy, that even though Susie and I might disagree about something, [it] would never come into my mind to divorce.
"'And it’s the same with you Lewis,' I said. 'I don’t want a divorce. You’re the best driver. I want you in our car and we want to provide you with the best car'."
During the lengthy meeting, the pair candidly voiced their disagreements. But eventually, they met halfway to emerge as close to each other as they had ever been.
"We kind of went into this discussion at loggerheads and then, after four or five hours in the kitchen, we found ourselves on a totally different level," Wolff added.
"A purely business-related relationship had become a personal relationship.
"He’s a friend. [It] doesn’t mean we don’t argue anymore but now, Lewis’ success is the team’s success, and the team’s success is Lewis’ success."
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