Toto Wolff ‘100 percent no’ to asking Hamilton to move over for Russell

Toto Wolff says “100 percent no” to asking Lewis Hamilton to move over for George Russell, but added he won’t make that call to Russell either.

Although separated by just Carlos Sainz on the Drivers’ Championship log, Hamilton and Russell, or perhaps one should say Russell and Hamilton, have shown very different form, and results.

While the younger Briton has seven top-five finishes, the only driver with that record this season, Hamilton has only three. He also has a non-score at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix where he was a disappointing P13 on the weekend in which he scraped into Q2 by 0.004s.

Their contrasting results are speculated to be in part because Russell is more used to driving a poor car than Hamilton is, and the latter – with his Mercedes experience – is the one that has been experimenting more when it comes to set-up.

But for whatever reason Russell has beaten Hamilton in six of this year’s seven races to sit 34 points ahead of his team-mate.

It begs the question could there come a time when Hamilton hears “Lewis this is Bono, Russell is faster than you”.

Wolff says no.

“No, 100 per cent no,” the Mercedes motorsport boss told The Telegraph.

“One hundred per cent we will allow them to race until a driver is mathematically out of contention, we’re not making such a call.”

But he also won’t be telling Russell to move over for Hamilton.

Asked if he would have a different answer if it was Hamilton needing Russell to move out of his way, Wolff insisted: “It makes no difference.”

Wolff is confident that the time will come when Hamilton is on a par with Russell, saying only bad luck has prevented that.

Hamilton finished P8 with Russell fifth, the seven-time World Champion unable to climb the order as he first battled Esteban Ocon and then Fernando Alonso.

Speaking to the official F1 website after Monaco, he said: “I think when you look at the bad spells that Lewis had – I mean look at the race today, stuck again,…