Toto Wolff opens up on shock plan to sack Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2016 battle

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

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.

In an interview with The 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. 

"You’re representing the Mercedes brand, and you just have to accept that it’s not all about you," the team chief explained.

"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’t crash into each other.

"And I have never had any fear of making that very clear. In 2016, [Nico] Rosberg and [Lewis] Hamilton crashed, and then they crashed again. So I fired them. I called my chief executive officer, Dieter Zetsche [at the Mercedes-Benz automotive company], and said, 'Listen, you need to sign something.'

"And he called me back and said, 'You’re making both drivers redundant?' And I said, 'Yeah, because otherwise they won’t understand how important it is to the interest of the brand and the team above their own.'

Podium: second placed Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 with race winner Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1

Photo by: XPB Images

"It was their personal rivalry that took over. And from a healthy competition, it went to a rivalry and it became animosity. And that’s 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’re not part of the team.'"

He added: "On Wednesday, we called them and said, 'Come in tomorrow,' and I said, 'My problem is that I don’t know whose fault it was.' Because it’s nuanced. Like everything in life, it’s never 100% wrong. It may be 50-50. It might be 51-49. It’d be 70-30. And I can’t 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. 

"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’t like each other? And it directly affects the lives of two and a half thousand people. Who do you think you are? And that’s an important understanding that you need to have with your drivers."

Ultimately, it was Rosberg who claimed the title. He retired shortly after.