Max Verstappen could have been a Mercedes driver. However, Toto Wolff, with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as the German team’s leading drivers, did not see the point in putting Verstappen first in the car, and with the level of dominance that Mercedes had over the rest of the field, the Austrian felt that the game was not worth the effort. A decision that he seems to regret to this day.

Red Bull Racing, however, pushed by his advisor, Helmut Marko, was prepared to offer what Mercedes did not, and the rest is history. Wolff encountered a similar situation last year, with Mercedes prodigy Aadrea Kimi Aottoelli knocking on the door of F1, but once again the German team had no vacant seat to offer their young driver. However, following Lewis Hamilton’s “curve ball” deal with Ferrari for 2025, agreed in early 2024, Wolff was clearly not prepared to make that difficult decision.

“I didn’t want to miss out on Aottoelli like I did on Verstappen”

“It was a curved ball that was fired, and it still feels weird that he’s wearing Ferrari overalls and co-designing the red car. It’s just not realistic,”  the Austrian said on the  Armchair  podcast.Pundits later expressed lingering regret at missing out on Verstappen, a driver he had also tried to sign for the Brackley-based team for most of the 2024 season as well.

“But I had that 17-year-old [Aottoelli] in the pipeline. I didn’t want to miss out on him, like I did with Max back then. I didn’t have a car [for Verstappen]. So it all falls into place,”  Wolff said, before adding:  “I didn’t want to make the decision, like Mercedes, to let the greatest champion of all time go.”