Wolff - How a heated discussion with Hamilton prevented Mercedes "divorce"

Toto Wolff has described a heated discussion with Lewis Hamilton at his home in 2016 that prevented the Briton's "divorce" from Mercedes.

Hamilton has been with the Brackley-based team since 2013, during which time he has won six of his seven F1 world titles.

But the partnership with Nico Rosberg soured when the duo battled for the title between 2014 and 2016.

The biggest flashpoint was the dramatic final-lap collision between the team-mates at the 2016 Austrian Grand Prix which Hamilton went on to win but after detailing how he stamped his authority in the aftermath of that event, Wolff went on to explain how he and Hamilton held crisis talks at the end of the year.

“We met at the [Mercedes] Christmas party in my home in Oxfordshire that December, reluctantly,” Wolff told The Times.

“I said we need to decide whether we want to work together or not. ‘You want to win as a driver, I want to win as a team. Sometimes our different agendas are going to lead to conflict and we need to decide whether we can cope with that situation.

“We were in my kitchen. I said to him, and Susie didn’t much like this analogy, that even though Susie and I might disagree about something, it would never come into my mind to divorce. ‘And it’s the same with you Lewis,’ I said. ‘I don’t want a divorce. You’re the best driver. I want you in our car and we want to provide you with the best car.’"

Explaining how the tensions boiled over during the talks, Wolff added: “We kind of went into this discussion at loggerheads and then, after four or five hours in the kitchen, we found ourselves on a totally different level.

"A purely business-related relationship had become a personal relationship. He’s a friend.

"That doesn’t mean we don’t argue anymore but now, Lewis’s success is the team’s success, and the team’s success is Lewis’s success.”

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