Saying goodbye to Lewis Hamilton three years after his lost his grip on the F1 World Championship, Toto Wolff is adamant that does not overshadow Mercedes’ story of success with the Briton.

Hamilton will leave Mercedes for Ferrari at the end of the F1 2024 season having exercised an escape clause in his contract to sign a multi-year deal with the Italian stable.

Toto Wolff dismisses Lewis Hamilton ‘failure’ talk

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

The season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will mark the end of the 39-year-old’s 12-year career with Mercedes, which includes six titles and 82 grand prix wins. Eighty of those wins were secured in their first nine years together.

While prolific in the years following Formula 1’s switch to V6-hybrid power units, Mercedes and Hamilton have toiled since 2022 when Formula 1 introduced ground-effect aerodynamic cars with the seven-time World Champion restricted to just two victories over the last three seasons.

As such,Hamilton has fallen short of the illustrious target of securing a record-breaking eighth Championship.

But Wolff insists that does not overshadow the success that Mercedes and the Briton have achieved together.

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“It’s the most competitive motorsport in the world and we were lucky and blessed with winning eight consecutive World Championship titles,” the team principal told the media including PlanetF1.com in Las Vegas.

“That wasn’t done before in any other sport. And Lewis won seven Drivers’ championships.

“You cannot extrapolate from that that you’re going to win forever or that you’re in the hunt for every single championship. That doesn’t happen.

“And the regs were changed twice and we maintained the level of performance and won championships. And then we’ve just been caught out by these new regulations in 2022.

“Until today, we’re just not able to put steady performance on the car and provide the drivers with something that is predictable, that has enough downforce, that doesn’t bounce or hop, that rides where the ride is acceptable, where the tyre degradation can be managed in the right way and not be too cold or too hot.

“That is how sport goes. That’s very easy.

“I don’t know where I read that or where I heard that, but a basketballer was asked whether he felt that his season was a failure.

“And he said: Michael Jordan played 10 OR 12 seasons in the NBA and he won four. Does that mean that the whole thing was a failure?

“Were the other six a failure? And I think we’ve been together 12 years now in this championship and we won eight. Are the other ones a failure?

“We finished third two years ago, we finished second last year, bearing in mind we haven’t won a race, and we won three this year. So that is not all a failure. That was a pretty good spell for Mercedes and for Lewis.

“And we will be trying to do it better. We are trying to do it better every single day, every single weekend. And the same will be next season and then the big one in ‘26.”

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