{"id":600718,"date":"2026-04-13T07:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T07:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/600718\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T07:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T07:23:10","slug":"toto-wolff-opens-up-on-shock-plan-to-sack-lewis-hamilton-and-nico-rosberg-in-2016-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/600718\/","title":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff opens up on shock plan to sack Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2016 battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> Formula 1 CEO and team chief Toto Wolff has revealed that he was ready to fire both Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Nico Rosberg<\/a> during their heated team-mate rivalry in 2016.<\/p>\n

The 2016 season featured an intense intra-team battle between the two Mercedes drivers. Having grown up racing against each other, their fierce rivalry reached a head as they fought for the championship title, which led to preventable crashes.<\/p>\n

In an interview with\u00a0The Athletic, Wolff revealed the lengths he was prepared to go to in order to protect the Brackley outfit and handle the two drivers’ animosity towards one another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You\u2019re representing the Mercedes brand, and you just have to accept that it\u2019s not all about you,” the team chief explained.<\/p>\n

“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\u2019t crash into each other.<\/p>\n

“And I have never had any fear of making that very clear. In 2016, [Nico]\u00a0Rosberg and [Lewis] Hamilton crashed, and then they crashed again. So I fired them. I called my chief executive officer, Dieter\u00a0Zetsche [at the Mercedes-Benz automotive company], and said, ‘Listen, you need to sign something.’<\/p>\n

“And he called me back and said, ‘You\u2019re making both drivers redundant?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, because otherwise they won\u2019t understand how important it is to the interest of the brand and the team above their own.’<\/p>\n

\"Podium: <\/p>\n

Podium: second placed Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 with race winner Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1<\/p>\n

Photo by: XPB Images<\/p>\n

“It was their personal rivalry that took over. And from a healthy competition, it went to a rivalry and it became animosity. And that\u2019s 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\u2019re not part of the team.'”<\/p>\n

He added: “On Wednesday, we called them and said, ‘Come in tomorrow,’ and I said, ‘My problem is that I don\u2019t know whose fault it was.’ Because it\u2019s nuanced. Like everything in life, it\u2019s never 100% wrong. It may be 50-50. It might be 51-49. It\u2019d be 70-30. And I can\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“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\u2019t like each other? And it directly affects the lives of two and a half thousand people. Who do you think you are? And that\u2019s an important understanding that you need to have with your drivers.”<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it was Rosberg who claimed the title. He retired shortly after.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes Formula 1 CEO and team chief Toto Wolff has revealed that he was ready to fire both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[209422,121187,49,48,578,576,577,932,1881,3764,82,227470,4962],"class_list":{"0":"post-600718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-bahrain-gp","9":"tag-bahrain-international-circuit","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-f1","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-lewis-hamilton","16":"tag-mercedes","17":"tag-nico-rosberg","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-toto-wolff-opens-up-on-shock-plan-to-sack-lewis-hamilton-and-nico-rosberg-in-2016-battle","20":"tag-trendingteam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}