Toto Wolff reveals he considered sacking Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg during explosive 2016 title fight
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has revealed he came closer than previously known to breaking up one of Formula 1’s most intense rivalries, admitting he was prepared to sack both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg during their explosive 2016 championship battle.
The all-Mercedes title fight that season pushed the relationship between the two team-mates to breaking point. Having grown up racing against each other, Hamilton and Rosberg entered 2016 as fierce rivals, but their on-track clashes — most notably at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona and the 2016 Austrian Grand Prix — escalated tensions beyond what the team considered acceptable.
While those incidents were visible to the public, Wolff has now revealed that the situation behind the scenes was even more serious, with Mercedes leadership contemplating drastic action to protect the team.
“You’re representing the Mercedes brand, and you just have to accept that it’s not all about you,” Wolff explained when reflecting on the rivalry.
Mercedes had always accepted that its drivers would race each other, but only within strict limits. “So, fact: they are competitors. We accept the competition. We accept them racing against each other as long as they respect certain red lines,” Wolff said. “And that is very simple: don’t crash into each other.”
However, repeated collisions between Hamilton and Rosberg pushed Wolff to the edge. “In 2016, Rosberg and Hamilton crashed, and then they crashed again. So I fired them,” he revealed, talking about their collisions at Barcelona and Austria.
The decision was not just symbolic. Wolff escalated the situation to the very top of the Mercedes organisation, contacting then-CEO Dieter Zetsche to formalise the move.
“I called my chief executive officer, Dieter Zetsche, and said, ‘Listen, you need to sign something,’” Wolff said. “And he called me back and said, ‘You’re making both drivers redundant?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, because otherwise they won’t understand how important it is to the interest of the brand and the team above their own.’”
At the heart of the issue was how a competitive relationship had spiralled into something more destructive. “It was their personal rivalry that took over,” Wolff explained. “From a healthy competition, it went to a rivalry and it became animosity. And that’s just not something I would allow in the organisation.”
Mercedes took the extraordinary step of temporarily removing both drivers from the team. “Based on these factors, we sent them an email and said, ‘At the moment, you’re not part of the team,’” Wolff revealed.
The move was designed to send a clear message — that no individual, regardless of status, was bigger than the team.
Despite the severity of the action, Wolff admitted the situation was not straightforward when it came to assigning blame for the incidents. “On Wednesday, we called them and said, ‘Come in tomorrow,’ and I said, ‘My problem is that I don’t know whose fault it was,’” he explained.
“Because it’s nuanced. Like everything in life, it’s never 100% wrong. It may be 50-50. It might be 51-49. It’d be 70-30. And I can’t judge.”
That uncertainty led to an even stronger warning being issued to both drivers. “And so what I said to them is that if it happens again, one has to go, and I may make a mistake. I may send the wrong one away.”
Wolff also highlighted the wider consequences of the drivers’ actions, pointing out that their rivalry extended far beyond personal pride or championship ambitions.
“People who need to repay their mortgages who work in the factories, what do they think?” he said. “That you two crash into each other because you don’t like each other?”
“And it directly affects the lives of two and a half thousand people. Who do you think you are? And that’s an important understanding that you need to have with your drivers.”
The 2016 season ultimately went down as one of the most dramatic in modern Formula 1 history. Despite the internal conflict, Mercedes continued to dominate on track, with Hamilton and Rosberg winning all but two races between them.
The championship battle went down to the final round in Abu Dhabi, where Rosberg secured the title after a tense and tactical race, resisting pressure from Hamilton in the closing stages.
Just days after clinching his first world championship, Rosberg stunned the sport by announcing his immediate retirement from Formula 1, bringing an abrupt end to both his career and one of the fiercest intra-team rivalries the sport has seen.
Wolff’s latest comments provide new insight into just how close Mercedes came to taking unprecedented action during that period — and underline the delicate balance required to manage two elite drivers competing within the same team.
