After the Mercedes officially confirmed the extension of the contract with Lewis Hamilton for the 2021 season, the head of the Toto Wolff team at a press conference commented on all sorts of rumors that appeared on this occasion.
Toto Wolff: "We agreed together that the contract will be one-year. First of all, because the regulation will also seriously change in 2022th. We want to see how the situation in the world and in our company will change at this point. In addition, it is also caused by the fact that negotiations began too late.
Due to the saturated season, we expected to discuss the contract with Lewis between the two races in Bahrain, but he fell ill, so in the end we started negotiations shortly before Christmas. It was important to agree on everything as quickly as possible, so we postponed the issue of the season of 2022, focusing on 2021 - and discuss it later this year.
The world remains some uncertainty, able to influence how our sport will develop, which will be our income, including from television and sponsors. Daimler and Mercedes are experiencing a transformation towards electrical means of transport, which requires investment. Today's financial reality is very different from the one that was a few years ago.
With all that, we are all - Lewis, I and a large group of people in Mercedes, always perceived this situation equally. We have never had disagreements. We realized that we should sign a contract for the 2021st, start work, and already in the course of the season - and much earlier than this time, discuss the situation with the 2022th. I would not want to negotiate the video link between Merry Christmas and the end of January.
Rumors that Lewis wanted to get a share from the team's income or influence the choice of his partner absolutely false. I can not imagine where they came from, because this information does not correspond to reality.
I myself read about it in the newspapers - and was surprised great. In fact, in all the past years, we have not discussed any questions about the riders. Lewis never asked about this over the past eight years. This is an exceptional command decision. The same applies to rumors about the division of income or share in them. We have never discussed this. "
Source: Formula 1 on F1news.ru