Wolff plays down chances of Verstappen to Mercedes in 2026
SPIELBERG, Austria, June 27 (Reuters) - George Russell is more likely to stay with Mercedes next year than Max Verstappen is to join, the Formula One team's boss Toto Wolff said on Friday while confirming his interest for the future.
Russell indicated on Thursday that Mercedes were talking to Verstappen about a move from Red Bull and suggested that was why an extension to his own contract beyond this season was taking time, although he was confident for the future.
"There is no delay in George's contract negotiations," Wolff told Sky Sports television at the Austrian Grand Prix, where Russell was fastest in first practice.
"It's pretty clear since a long time what our timings were and are, we've known each other for such a long time and so there is no such thing as a delay."
Wolff said it was a question of trying to understand what time framework Verstappen, a four times world champion who is contracted to Red Bull until 2028, was operating under and what his plans were.
"And that could be long into the future," he added.
"But that has no effect on us putting a signature on George's contract."
Russell said on Thursday that it was normal Mercedes would want to talk to Verstappen.
Asked if Russell, whose teammate is 18-year-old Italian rookie Kimi Antonelli, was more likely to be in the Mercedes than Verstappen next year, Wolff replied: "Yes."
"What we are trying to do in the team is to be transparent... you can either choose to hold things under wraps or like we have done in the last 10-12 years is put it out there and say 'this is the situation'," said Wolff.
"There is no such thing as saying 'we are going to sign Max'. This is so far away that it is not realistic. With George, we talk about everything."
Speaking to reporters earlier, Wolff said everything was normal and going to plan with Russell's contract talks.
He also did not rule out pairing Russell and Verstappen in future, despite their recent public feuding and on track clashes.
"I can imagine every line-up. I had Rosberg and Hamilton fighting for a world championship, so everything else afterwards is easy," said the Austrian.
"There's pros and cons of having two drivers fighting each other hard.
"We've seen examples where that functioned and other examples where it didn't."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Leader Live
2 hours ago
- Leader Live
Toto Wolff again opens door to Max Verstappen-George Russell pairing at Mercedes
Wolff has long been courting Verstappen and Russell, 27, revealed prior to Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix that he believes talks with the four-time world champion and Mercedes are ongoing. Russell, who has been one of the grid's standout performers this season – winning at the previous round in Canada – also suggested Mercedes' discussions with Verstappen could be delaying the renewal of his deal which expires in six months. Verstappen and Russell have a rocky history. They were embroiled in a vicious war of words in Abu Dhabi last December. Verstappen then accelerated into the British driver's Mercedes in Spain earlier this month – a wild move that leaves the Dutchman one penalty point away from being banned for next weekend's British Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg's relationship descended into chaos in the three years they fought for the world championship as team-mates at Mercedes. But, when asked if Verstappen could be paired with Russell, Wolff said: 'I can imagine every line-up. I had Hamilton and Rosberg fighting for a world championship so everything afterwards is easy. 'There are pros and cons to having two drivers fighting each other hard. We have seen examples where they have functioned and others where they didn't.' Russell's Italian team-mate Kimi Antonelli, 18, has impressed in his rookie season. However, he is under contract for this season only, and has no guarantee of a seat with Mercedes beyond this year. He is 73 points behind Russell in the standings. Verstappen's contract at Red Bull runs until 2028, although performance clauses within his current deal could activate an early release. Pressed directly on whether he is in dialogue with Verstappen, Wolff replied: 'At the moment, clearly we need to explore what is happening in the future. 'That doesn't change what I think about George, or Kimi or the line-up that I am extremely happy with. I want to have conversations behind-closed-doors and not in town halls.' It had been suggested that Russell's Mercedes extension could coincide with his home race at Silverstone next weekend. However, it is understood that a fresh deal for Russell, who is 62 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri, is not imminent. And Wolff continued: 'When it comes to the contract situation, our sport is pressure, constant pressure, whether you are inside the car or outside the car, and you just need to cope with that. George knows that. 'I feel like when you are put into a comfort zone that is more detrimental to performance. 'He has always performed to the expectations we have set and he is continuing to do so. We have not given him a car to win the world championship, and that is on us. 'But in the times when the car has been good he is winning races, he is always there and you know he will extract what is in the car. 'He needs to be top of our list because he is a winner, a Mercedes junior, and he has been with us for a long time.'
Leader Live
2 hours ago
- Leader Live
Lando Norris puts Canada crash behind him to set practice pace in Austria
Norris' world championship bid was dealt a significant blow in Montreal a fortnight ago when he ran into the back of Piastri and retired from the race. The collision cast him 22 points adrift of Piastri but Norris claimed an early advantage at Spielberg's Red Bull Ring by topping the timesheets. The top three in FP2 🥇🥈🥉#F1 #AustrianGP — Formula 1 (@F1) June 27, 2025 Norris finished 0.157 seconds clear of Piastri in a McLaren one-two, with four-time world champion Max Verstappen third. The Dutchman finished three tenths off the pace. Aston Martin's Lance Stroll ended the day in fourth, one place clear of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. George Russell, who landed his first win of the season in Montreal, slipped to sixth having set the pace in the opening running of the weekend earlier on Friday. For Lewis Hamilton, it was another difficult day at the wheel of his Ferrari. A gearbox problem restricted Hamilton's programme in the first session and then he was only 10th quickest in the day's concluding running. 'For some reason I have just got no pace,' said Hamilton on the radio, with his best lap nearly a second off the leading time and three tenths adrift of Leclerc in the other Ferrari. Hamilton was also the subject of an investigation after impeding Kimi Antonelli – the Italian teenager who replaced him at Mercedes – through turn four. Antonelli had to take evasive action at high speed as Hamilton wandered back on to the racing line. Hamilton immediately apologised to Antonelli – drawing alongside the 18-year-old's Mercedes before offering an apologetic hand – but was summoned to see the stewards to explain his actions. Hamilton escaped with a warning. Earlier, Norris sat out the opening session with Alex Dunne becoming the first Irishman since Ralph Firman in 2003 to take part in an Formula One event. Dunne, 19, who is a McLaren development driver and leads the Formula Two standings, finished an impressive fourth and within a tenth of Piastri. 'A little boy's dream came true,' he said over the radio. 'This is the best day of my life.'
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Verstappen, Russell & Mercedes - what factors are at play & what might happen next?
Less than 24 hours after George Russell broke Mercedes' contract talks with Max Verstappen out into the open at the Austrian Grand Prix, his team boss Toto Wolff made an attempt to calm the situation Russell is out of contract at the end of this season. He said, in the context of his own discussions with Mercedes about a new deal, that it was "only normal that conversations with the likes of Verstappen are ongoing".Wolff spent an entire news conference on Friday afternoon at the Red Bull Ring very much not denying that he was talking to said it was "territory that I don't want to discuss", but added that "people talk" and that Mercedes were "transparent" within their organisation. "I'm always supportive of the driver, Wolff said. "There's no such thing as saying things I wouldn't want him to say."Speaking to television cameras straight after the news conference, though, Wolff said that Russell was likelier to be in the Mercedes than Verstappen next year, and that signing Verstappen was "not realistic at this stage".But "not realistic" does not mean "couldn't happen". Why might Verstappen want to move? On paper, Verstappen is a Red Bull driver next year and beyond. A Red Bull spokesperson said: "Max has a contract to 2028."At the same time, Verstappen and his management have talked with Mercedes about the possibility of moving there next year. And it's likely Verstappen could find a way out of his Red Bull contract if he really wanted Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko said in April that he had "great concern" about Verstappen's future in the team given their performance at the time. And in March he told BBC Sport that: "We know that if we don't deliver for Max, all the top drivers have performance clauses in their contract."For Verstappen, there are obvious reasons why a move away from Red Bull to Mercedes might seem has won four consecutive drivers' titles with his current team, but in the past 18 months Red Bull have slipped from their competitive built up such a large lead in the first half of last season that he was able to hold off a late challenge from McLaren and Lando Norris with relative McLaren started this season off strongly, and Red Bull have not been able to mount a consistent has taken two wins, but they have come on similar types of circuit - those with predominantly quick corners. On balance, the McLaren is the faster has come in the context of Red Bull losing their design legend Adrian Newey to Aston Martin, and long-time sporting director Jonathan Wheatley to Red Bull driver Sergio Perez, sacked at the end of last season but able to negotiate a deal that forced the team to pay him for the two years of his contract they are not fulfilling, said in a podcast this week that Red Bull's decline dated directly from Newey's would be no surprise if, in those circumstances, Verstappen's confidence in Red Bull's ability to design a fully competitive car had taken a there are the new rules coming into force in F1 next year, which represent a major change on both cars and engines. The engine change is especially large. It increases the proportion of total performance of the engine provided by the electrical components to 50%.Red Bull have set up a new company to develop and build its own engine. That was always going to be a tough task, and at the moment the widespread belief within F1 is that Mercedes are leading the way on performance with the new engines, and that Red Bull are then, is looking at a situation where he has serious question marks about Red Bull's future prospects, and every reason to believe Mercedes might be able to provide him with a more competitive car next season. Why might Mercedes want Verstappen? Russell has been driving an excellent season, and comes into the weekend in Austria after a dominant victory in Canada last time his comments on Thursday laid bare the problem as far as the Briton is concerned."Toto has made it clear to me that how I'm performing is as good as anybody," Russell said."There is only one driver that you can debate in terms of performance. And these are his words and not my words, and that is why I have no concern about my future."But there are two seats to every team and I guess he needs to think who are those two drivers going to be for those two seats and I guess that's what the delay is."That "one driver" is obviously Verstappen. The Dutchman is regarded throughout F1 as the outstanding driver on the grid at the moment, someone who produces a consistent level of excellence that none of his colleagues can Verstappen was not an option, there would be no question about Russell getting a new deal at Mercedes. Why might a deal not happen? How appealing a Mercedes drive might be to Verstappen will depend on the package they can put together for does not come without baggage. For one thing, he is very expensive. His current Red Bull salary is said to be about $75m (£55m). And that's before endorsements and other Bull don't have to justify that spend to anyone. They are a private company. But it might not be so easy for Mercedes, as a corporate entity, to justify that sort of outlay on a racing driver, even if he is the best in the if they can't, would Verstappen be prepared to take a pay cut to drive a potentially more competitive car?Then there is the question of image. Verstappen is a controversial character who takes things to the edge of acceptability on track and sometimes time to time, he does things that Mercedes might not feel comfortable being associated with their brand - think back two races to his collision with Russell in Spain, or to Mexico last year, when his driving against Lando Norris earned him two 10-second is also very much his own man, who says and does what he wants. He's smart and usually toes the company line. But just as with his on-track behaviour, every now and again he decides he wants to say his piece in a way that a more corporate environment might not find so also demands that the team operates for him. It's hard to imagine Verstappen, for example, agreeing to accept the sort of team-first philosophy operated by McLaren with Norris and Oscar team principal James Vowles, who was a central part of Mercedes' F1 management structure before taking on his new role in 2023, touched on this when he was asked about the prospect of Verstappen moving to Mercedes earlier this year."Can you add a tiny bit more performance? Yes through Max," Vowles said. "I think there is more performance to be added through Max."I don't think anyone in the room would deny that he is extraordinary in what he can do. But he comes with a lot of downsides as well that we have to acknowledge."And I think what Mercedes does have is a great culture with two drivers that are delivering near to the peak of the car and with one that's on the way up. So I personally don't think there's a place for him." Could Russell partner Verstappen? Wolff has another factor to consider while he is in this exploratory phase with Verstappen and his Russell and his current team-mate Kimi Antonelli are long-time Mercedes proteges. Wolff would have to drop one of them to make way for paper, Russell has been comfortably the stronger performer this year. But Antonelli is a rookie and only and Verstappen have had a difficult relationship over the past few years. This started with a row over an incident at the 2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and blew up massively over an incident in Qatar last year, in which Russell accused Verstappen of being a "bully", and Verstappen said Russell was a "loser" and a "backstabber". It was revived two races ago when Verstappen collided with Russell in the closing stages of the Spanish Grand diminished the importance of this on Friday, pointing to the fact that he managed to have Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as team-mates for three years from 2014-16, adding: "So everything else afterwards is easy. There's pros and cons of having two drivers fighting each other hard. We've seen examples where that functioned and other examples where it didn't."What he did not say is that after the Hamilton-Rosberg experience, Wolff deliberately chose Valtteri Bottas as Hamilton's next team-mate, specifically to avoid having to deal with that level of tension also knew that he could handle Hamilton and Russell together because of their personalities and being at different stages of their career; likewise with Russell and and Russell would be a whole different prospect. Even if Mercedes felt they could handle that combination, it's hard to see Verstappen even accepting Russell as a team-mate in the context of their the same time, pairing Verstappen with Antonelli would be putting the Italian's future career at risk, too, given the extra pressures involved. What are Russell's options? Should Verstappen be able to reach an agreement with Mercedes, Russell would most likely be looking for a drive. And his only realistic option would be the seat vacated by not only because Red Bull would need a top-line driver and Russell would be the best available, but also because there are no other competitive options for Russell - the line-ups at McLaren and Ferrari are confirmed for next Martin might be appealing, with Newey and Honda engines, but they also have two drivers under contract for of which makes this an especially uncomfortable time for Russell, who has been one of the most impressive drivers of the season, has comprehensively outpaced his team-mate, but has no option but to sit and watch his boss explore his then as Wolff said: "When it comes to the contract situation, our sport is pressure, constant pressure. Whether you're in the car, outside of the car, you just need to cope with that, and George knows that, like any other driver knows it."
