"I don’t flirt outside": Mercedes boss Toto Wolff on whether Max Verstappen could be a target for 2026

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has dismissed suggestions that the team would target Max Verstappen for the 2026 season. The start of the season was a rocky one for the Austrian when Lewis Hamilton announced that he would be leaving the team and joining Ferrari. As Toto has admitted later, the team principal was caught off-guard by the move and the subsequent announcement.

Since then, Toto Wolff has had a few conversations with Verstappen in what was a very public courting process. With Red Bull having a lot of internal turmoil and with Jos Verstappen and Christian Horner on opposite sides of it, the Austrian was quite open when it came to being interested in having the Dutch driver in the team.

With Kimi Antonelli being announced for 2025 as a replacement for Hamilton, the immediate switch from Red Bull appears to be on the back burner. However, with George Russell's expiring at the end of the 2025 F1 season, there have been suggestions that Mercedes could target an Antonelli-Verstappen driver pairing for 2026.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, however, has dismissed suggestions that the pursuit for the Dutch driver would continue. He said (via F1):

“What I appreciated in dealing with them [Verstappen’s team], it’s just very straightforward. I don’t flirt outside. I’ve always said it, I got maybe caught out by the whole situation [of Hamilton leaving], but I’ve not entertained any discussions with any drivers when giving it all from the team to make it a success."

“This is why all of our focus in the team is on George and Kimi, and that’s what I also said. There’s no discussion, there’s no second thoughts about what are doing in 2026, because now it’s about 2024 and 2025."

Wolff also talked about how the immediate future is going to involve the young Italian and an intensive testing program.

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Mercedes aiming to conduct an intensive testing program for Kimi Antonelli

Citing the example of Lewis Hamilton, a driver who made an immediate impression on his debut but had also gone through an intensive testing program, Mercedes boss Toto said that something like that is going to be important for Kimi Antonelli.

In F1 regulations, teams could use two-year-old cars for private tests, and these were used early in the year to zero in on Kimi Antonelli as the driver. Wolff admitted that this was something that the German team was going to do more of in the upcoming months before Antonelli is ready to debut in F1 in 2025. He said:

“The TPC testing this year was really important. We will be continuing with that because when you look at the blueprint back in the day that Lewis [arrived], it was a lot of testing to prepare not only for the driving but also going through a race weekend. [That] preparation is what we’ve done."

Mercedes has a very interesting prodigy in Antonelli on the team. It will be interesting to see what he brings to the table in 2025 because all eyes will be on him for sure.