Even though Toto Wolff sees the positive side of Netflix, he warns against taking everything at face value in “Drive to Survive”: “Creative freedom”
Did Toto Wolff promise Lewis Hamilton never to speak to Max Verstappen as long as the Briton was driving for Mercedes? That’s the impression you get from watching the latest season of the Netflix documentary “Drive to Survive”.
“That came across a bit wrong,” the Mercedes motorsport boss defends himself in an interview with Sky, speaking of ‘creative freedom’ on Netflix’s part, so that the series ‘must be enjoyed with caution’. ”I watched three episodes. And at times I have to pull myself together when I see us on TV with the stories.”
As for the statement with Verstappen, Wolff explains: “The statement was definitely that I said I wouldn’t talk to any driver at all before I had cleared it with Lewis. And then it was taken out that I promised Lewis that I wouldn’t talk to Verstappen.”
But when Hamilton announced his move to Ferrari, Verstappen was, of course, a candidate for the Silver Arrows. Wolff flirted quite openly with the Dutchman and wanted to lure him away from Red Bull, where there had been some disagreements around team principal Christian Horner at the beginning of the 2024 season.
Wolff also talked quite openly about the topic and possible successors for Hamilton with his wife Susie at home (at the breakfast table on the sunny balcony in Monaco).
Starting the season in Oz doesn’t feel the same without Danny Ric
How much Drive to Survive did you watch over the weekend? F1 pic.twitter.com/UcOENZs3Dr
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For the Austrian, these recordings are “quite funny”, as he says. “Discussions then take place that were really, but which you then somehow reconstruct. And you have to pull yourself together when you see it again afterwards.”
“And they interpret the things very imaginatively, as we have just heard.”
Nevertheless, Wolff finds the series positive for Formula 1 because it has given the series a new boom, especially in the USA, and has brought young people to the sport in particular.
The fastest growing fan group is young girls. “I mean, there’s this Walk of Autographs, the Walk of Fame or the Walk of Shame. There are certainly 2,000 autograph hunters or selfie hunters, 80 percent of whom are young girls,” he says. “And that shows that our young drivers are really going down well.”
