Mercedes would celebrate Lewis Hamilton winning an eighth world title with Ferrari next year as long as it does not come at the expense of his own championship success, team principal Toto Wolff said.
‘If we can’t win, you should win,’ Wolff told Hamilton over the radio after the pair’s last race together with Mercedes at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday.
Hamilton’s fourth place marked the end of a 12-year partnership with the team, in which he won six of his seven world championships and 84 of his 105 race victories.
Next year Hamilton will race for Ferrari alongside Charles Leclerc, while Mercedes will replace the seven-time champion with rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
‘We will be competitors [next year] and I said if we can’t win, we will cheer for him and for an eighth championship,’ Wolff said after Sunday’s race. ‘But obviously the team [Mercedes], the drivers, the brand, this is the main priority to win, and we will give everything we have.’
Hamilton moved up from 16th on the grid to fourth in his final race for Mercedes, taking advantage of an alternative strategy that allowed him to push to the chequered flag and overtake teammate George Russell, who started sixth, on the last lap of the race.
Hamilton’s low grid position was partly due to a bollard, moved by Kevin Magnussen’s Haas on the last sector of the lap, getting stuck under his car before the last two corners of his qualifying lap. Wolff believes Hamilton had the pace to fight for one last victory in Abu Dhabi had it not been for the unfortunate incident.
‘I always try to be analytical and if the bollard had not hindered us yesterday, we could have been fighting for the win,’ he said. ‘On the other hand, he told me ‘we’ve had so many wins and so much success, these last races don’t change how we feel about it.
‘ He drove like a world champion today from P16. We played for a long time and finished fourth, pulling away from Red Bull. That was a world champion statement.’
Wolff plans to maintain a strong relationship with Hamilton next year despite the move to Ferrari.
‘We have said we will work hard to maintain the relationship,’ he added. ‘Fierce competition on the track, but if individuals want the relationship to continue beyond the competition, we will. ‘We still play our sports sessions, where we’re both so competitive and try to beat each other, and we ride bikes [together].’
Next week, Hamilton will visit Mercedes’ main sponsor Petronas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as well as Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, before visiting the team’s two UK-based Formula One factories in Brixwoth and Brackley. Mercedes said the visits will be a celebration of Hamilton’s career with the team.
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