Toto Wolff fired ‘tough’ Hamilton and Russell warning before 2023

Lewis Hamilton opens up on difficult season for Mercedes

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Nico Rosberg has sent a message to Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff regarding his driving duo of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. The pair endured a difficult first season together as team-mates as the highly anticipated W13 proved to be rather underwhelming.

They only managed one win combined which came in the penultimate race of the season as Russell claimed his first F1 victory in Brazil. The 24-year-old finished fourth in the drivers standings, while Hamilton finished sixth and went a whole season without winning a Grand Prix race for the first time in his illustrious career.

Former Silver Arrows star Rosberg closely watched the team’s progress throughout the season, and provided his thoughts on Russell becoming just the third team-mate to beat Hamilton over a season. This follows on from the successes of Jenson Button at McLaren in 2011 and the German himself five years later at Mercedes.

The 2016 world champion also expects the British pair to be evenly matched heading into 2023. “Lewis is still at his best so to beat him over a season is so tough, but it will be so great to watch because those guys are so closely matched,” Rosberg told Sky Sports’ ‘Any Driven Monday’.

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“George, certainly, is a future world champion. I am also looking forward to watching how Toto [Wolff] will manage the two drivers. One thing is managing them when they are fighting for 10th place, or sixth place.

“That is a whole different story to when you are managing drivers fighting for race win after race win, or even a championship. That is a completely different ballgame. So that’s something I am certainly looking forward to.”

“George has just done a very good season, so consistent, getting the maximum out of the car all the time so it is hugely impressive for his first year there in Mercedes,” he added. “Lewis is still at his very best so to beat Lewis is just an unbelievable achievement.

“We all know Lewis had a bit of an unlucky, scruffy season where the car was not going well and they were experimenting a lot so that kind of mixes things up a little bit. But that doesn’t take anything away from George who did an incredibly good job.”

Russell described 2022 as his best campaign yet and will hope to go from strength to strength next season. “It’s all relative in the end, because this season is still the best season of my career,” he said. “We had a lot of podiums, and I think we had a lot of really good races. I think we have to take the positives out of…I’m not going to call it a difficult situation, but on the performance side we are not where we want to be.”

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