Toto Wolff has opened up on how he first learned that Lewis Hamilton was set to leave Mercedes to join Ferrari in 2025, with the team boss initially hearing from Carlos Sainz’s father that the move was happening.
While past rumours surrounding the possibility of Hamilton partnering with the Scuderia had surfaced but never flourished into reality, the scenario looked to be more realistic this time around – something confirmed to Wolff when he received a call from Carlos Sainz Senior.
READ MORE: Wolff concedes it was ‘for the good’ of Hamilton to move from Mercedes to Ferrari
“I heard the bells ringing two weeks before [Lewis told me the news],” Wolff explained during an appearance on the High Performance Podcast. “The old man Sainz called me and said, ‘This is what’s happening’.
“And then there were a few drivers that rang me up that didn’t before, so I thought, ‘Okay, there’s something going on there’. I sent a text to [Ferrari boss] Fred Vasseur saying, ‘You’re taking our driver?’ – didn’t get any response, very unusual for Fred, he’s a good friend. So I saw it coming.
“When Lewis arrived in the house like he did so many years before, we had a bit of small talk like we always do about the Christmas holidays and all of that. Then I said, ‘Well, we are recruiting from Ferrari now, we got this guy’ and Lewis said, ‘Oh, there’s something I need to tell you’.