Having spent the better part of seven months flirting with Max Verstappen, Toto Wolff admits it was “immediately clear” that the Dutchman would not leave Red Bull for Mercedes.
With Red Bull’s off-track saga involving team boss Christian Horner following hot on the heels of Lewis Hamilton’s announcement that he’d be joining Ferrari next season, Wolff very publicly made a play for Verstappen.
Although the team boss had hoped that maybe he could persuade Verstappen to swap Red Bull for Mercedes, he knew even back then that if that didn’t happen, it was Antonelli who he wanted in the W16.
“I made up my mind five minutes after Lewis Hamilton told me that he’s going to Ferrari,” Wolff said when the team confirmed the Italian.
“Obviously we were discussing other options and looking at the Max idea – we didn’t discount it completely with looking at what happened at Red Bull.
“But instinctively that is the line-up with these two [Russell and Antonelli] that I always wanted, bearing in mind the fast-tracking that we did with Kimi and everything related there too, but that was immediately what I wanted to do.”
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