‘I fired them’ – Wolff’s explosive claim on Hamilton-Rosberg rivalry

Toto Wolff has lifted the lid on one of the most explosive moments of the Mercedes team’s history, revealing he was prepared to take the ultimate step during the peak of the fierce intra-team battle between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg – by effectively removing both drivers from the team.

The infamous 2016 season saw tensions inside Mercedes spiral into repeated on-track collisions as the two former childhood rivals fought for supremacy.

While fans watched the sparks fly on track, Wolff was busy drafting… "redundancy" notices.

Following a string of preventable collisions – most notably the double-DNF at the Spanish Grand Prix and a final-lap clash in Austria – Wolff decided that the "Silver War" had become a liability to the 2,500 employees at Brackley and Brixworth.

Putting the brand above the drivers

For Wolff, the rivalry had devolved from a sporting contest into a toxic animosity that threatened the Mercedes-Benz reputation. In a interview with The Athletic, he detailed the moment he decided to pull the trigger on his superstar lineup.

"You’re representing the Mercedes brand, and you just have to accept that it’s not all about you," Wolff explained.

"So, fact: they are competitors. We accept the competition. We accept them racing against each other as long as they respect certain red lines. And that is very simple: don’t crash into each other. And I have never had any fear of making that very clear.”

When those red lines were crossed repeatedly, Wolff reached out to then-Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche to authorize a move that would have sent shockwaves through the sporting world.

"In 2016, Rosberg and Hamilton crashed, and then they crashed again. So I fired them. I called my chief executive officer, Dieter Zetsche, and said, 'Listen, you need to sign something.'

“And he called me back and said, 'You’re making both drivers redundant?' And I said, 'Yeah, because otherwise they won’t understand how important it is to the interest of the brand and the team above their own.'"

From healthy competition to toxic animosity

Wolff went further in explaining how quickly the situation escalated inside the organisation.

“It was their personal rivalry that took over,” the Austrian said. “And from a healthy competition, it went to a rivalry and it became animosity.

“And that’s just not something I would allow in the organisation, and based on these factors, we sent them an email and said, 'At the moment, you’re not part of the team.'"

He added that the decision-making process itself was clouded by the difficulty of assigning blame.

"On Wednesday, we called them and said, 'Come in tomorrow,' and I said, 'My problem is that I don’t know whose fault it was.' Because it’s nuanced. Like everything in life, it’s never 100% wrong. It may be 50-50. It might be 51-49. It’d be 70-30. And I can’t judge.

“And so what I said to them is that if it happens again, one has to go, and I may make a mistake. I may send the wrong one away."

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He also pointed to the wider consequences of their rivalry beyond the garage.

"People who need to repay their mortgages who work in the factories, what do they think? That you two crash into each other because you don’t like each other? And it directly affects the lives of two and a half thousand people. Who do you think you are? And that’s an important understanding that you need to have with your drivers."

Ultimately, the standoff did not require that extreme resolution. Rosberg went on to clinch the 2016 world title before retiring from Formula 1 shortly after, closing one of the most intense championship battles the sport has ever seen.

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