“Well, Lewis, we’ve all known for many years wears his heart on the sleeve,” said Wolff. “I think it was such a bad experience for him [in Brazil] – that whole race weekend, and particularly the Sunday – that there’s something that in a way wasn’t unusual. Now, this time was probably particularly bad.
“I think he and us as a team have been really doing well at holding on to working together. He announced that he’s going to Ferrari at the beginning of the year and I’m quite proud of what we have achieved to maintain the professional relationship like we are.
“We knew it was never going to be easy, and if the car is bad on such a day, then we have not given him a tool that is good enough to what he should have.”
Wolff was then pushed for some more background on the quotes attributed to him in Mercedes’s book and what he meant by the “shelf-life” comment – given that he later stated it was taken out of context.
“I’ve said it very often about this world particularly – it’s taking a toll on all of us,” Wolff commented. “We are doing more than 20 races a year, we fly around. What I said is that everybody has a shelf-life.