Toto Wolff has backed Lewis Hamilton to stay at Ferrari and believes his former driver can win an eighth F1 world championship.
Hamilton has endured a torrid start to life at Ferrari, failing to finish on the podium in the first 14 races of the 2025 season.
This weekend in Hungary, Hamilton qualified 12th on the grid – when teammate Charles Leclerc secured pole position – and labelled his displays “useless”, adding that Ferrari should look to replace him.
Hamilton finished the race in the same position, outside the points-scoring top-10, but Mercedes boss Wolff praised Hamilton’s “emotional transparency” with his comments afterwards.
“That is Lewis wearing his heart on his sleeve,” said Wolff, after the race in Hungary. “It’s what he thought when he was asked after the session. It was very raw. He was down on himself.
“We [at Mercedes] had it in the past when he felt that he’d underperformed in his own expectations. He has been that emotionally transparent since he was a young adult.
“He will beat himself up. But he’s the GOAT [greatest of all time] and will always be the GOAT. [Nothing] will take that away, no single weekend or race season which hasn’t gone to plan. That’s something he needs to always remember — that he’s the greatest of all time.
“Lewis has unfinished business in Formula 1. In the same way that Mercedes underperformed over this latest set of regulations, we never got happy with ground-effect car, in the same way it [affects] him. Maybe it is linked to driving style.”
Hamilton won six of his seven titles at Mercedes but went to Ferrari with dreams of winning a record-breaking eighth championship. However, all his sights are set on next year given McLaren’s dominance this year.
“He shouldn’t go anywhere next year,” Wolff said, when asked about Hamilton’s future prospects at Ferrari and whether he still has what it takes to win.
“There are brand new cars which are completely different to drive. New power units which need an intelligent way of managing the energy. I hope he’s in [F1] for many more years. Next year is an important one.
“If he has a car underneath him which he has confidence in, and which does what he wants, then yes [he can win an eighth title]. If he has a car which isn’t giving him the feedback that he wants — like the Mercedes of the past few years or the Ferrari which seems to be worse — then not.
“But you ask me if he still has ‘it’? He definitely has it.”
F1 next heads to the Dutch Grand Prix on 31 August after a four-week break.
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