Derby Mercedes, Wolff remembers 2016: “I had fired both Hamilton and Rosberg”

Like ten years ago. The start of this 2026 season, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell sharing victories, podiums and the first two positions in the championship, giving the idea of ​​being able to reduce the race for the world title to a derby entirely inside the Mercedes garage, moves the hands of F1 back by a decade. In 2016, in fact, there was perhaps the peak of the Brackley team’s dominance in those first years of the hybrid era with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg who won 19 races out of 21. In the collective memory, however, the memory is linked above all to the first of the two races that slipped out of their hands: the infamous Spanish GP in which the two Mercedes standard-bearers knocked each other off the track during the first lap, certifying on worldwide television a rivalry that had now transcended the boundaries of simple sporting confrontation and had clearly become a personal matter. In the end the title was won by Nico Rosberg, who then exhausted from the clash with his English rival decided to retire, thus allowing team principal Toto Wolff to hire Valtteri Bottas and greatly ease the tension within the team. Rosberg and Hamilton also clashed in the Austrian GP that season, this time on the final lap, with Hamilton winning that race and Rosberg instead falling from first to fourth. In a long and interesting interview given to the website The Athletic, Wolff himself recalled that season and, speaking about one of the clashes that took place between his two drivers, he revealed that in an attempt to restore order within a team in total turmoil he had gone so far as to fire both drivers who were dominating the championship. Toto’s iron fist “In 2016, (Nico) Rosberg and (Lewis) Hamilton clashed once and then again. So I fired them – said Wolff – I called my CEO, Dieter Zetsche, at Mercedes, and I said to him: ‘Look, you have to sign something’. He called me back and said: ‘You’re firing both drivers’. And I said: ‘Yes, because otherwise they’ll never understand how important it is.’ put the interest of the brand and the team before their own.” Their personal rivalry had taken over. From healthy competition it turned into rivalry and then into animosity. And this is something I would never allow within the organization. Based on these elements we sent them an email saying: “You are not part of the team at the moment”. On Wednesday we called them and said: “Come tomorrow”, and I added: “My problem is that I don’t know who’s to blame.” Because it’s a complex issue. As in ogni cosa nella vita, non c’è mai una colpa al 100%. Potrebbe essere 50-50. Potrebbe essere 51-49. Potrebbe essere 70-30. E io non posso giudicare. Quindi quello che ho detto loro è che se fosse successo di nuovo, uno dei due avrebbe dovuto andarsene e avrei potuto sbagliarmi. Avrei potuto mandare via la persona sbagliata. Cosa devono pensare le persone che devono pagare il mutuo e che lavorano in fabbrica? Che voi due vi scontrate perché non vi piacete? E che questo influisce directly on the lives of two thousand five hundred people. Who do you think you are? And this is an important awareness that pilots must have.” Russell and Antonelli, today’s two ‘roosters in the henhouse’, are warned.