Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says that he is hoping to use Lewis Hamilton's departure from the team at the end of the season as an opportunity to be bold when it comes to choosing a replacement driver.
Wolff had thought that Hamilton was under contract until the end of 2025, but this week's announcement that the seven-time champion would move to Ferrari next season has changed everything.
It comes just a week after both Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris confirmed new multi-year deals with Ferrari and McLaren respectively, taking two potential high-profile names off the board as far as Wolff is concerned.
"I guess that a few contracts have been signed a few weeks ago that we would have looked at," Wolff admitted in comments on social media on Friday. "That would have been interesting, but the timing here bit us a bit.
"Situations and things can change quickly," he added. "If you'd told me two days ago that Lewis was going to Ferrari, I didn't think it was possible.
"Contracts are only as good as the driver or the teams want to race," he pointed out. "And who knows what's happening in the driver market that could be unexpected and opportunities for us."
With Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri also not in play in the foreseeable future, Wolff will need to dig deeper than the obvious big names. He insists that he welcomes the chance to be bolder with his selection.
"In a way, I always like change because change provides you with opportunity," Wolff commented. "I'm really looking forward to taking the right decisions for the team, together with my colleagues, over who's going to be in the seat next year.
©Mercedes
"Maybe it's a chance to do something bold," he added, thinking back to the last time he had a decision of this magnitude on his hands when Nico Rosberg abruptly retired from F1 just days after winning the 2016 world championship.
"In the same way we embraced the Nico situation, that was equally like from one moment to the other unexpected," Wolff said.
In terms of casting around for a star of the future to build the franchise around, the name of Italian junior driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli has been prominent in recent days.
The teenager won last season's Formula Regional European Championship and is being backed by Mercedes in this year's Formula 2 series with Prema. A title-winning rookie campaign could easily propel him to the top of Wolff's list.
But Wolff said that Antonelli should stick to his F2 campaign and not be distracted by F1 chatter, adding that he himself had no intention of being hustled into a premature decision.
He said the timing of Hamilton's announcement gave Mercedes "a long time to decide what we want to do", adding: "It's not something I want to be rushed into."
And he pointed out that Mercedes already has one of the top-rated drivers on today's grid committed to staying with the team long-term, in the form of George Russell.
"We've such a solid foundation, such a quick and talented and intelligent guy in a car that we just need to take the right choice for the second driver, the second seat."
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