Toto Wolff feels the need “to protect” Lewis Hamilton due to people starting to “offend” the Mercedes F1 driver 

Toto Wolff revealed that he feels the need to protect Lewis Hamilton because of the offensive attitude that people have started carrying towards him.

Lewis Hamilton is arguably one of the greatest drivers in Formula 1's history, but like any other driver, he has been under the radar of criticism lately. The driver has been chasing his eighth world championship since the 2021 season, and despite coming very close to it, he has only gotten far apart.

With the uncompetitive machinery that Mercedes created in 2022, the dream looked even further for him to achieve. The last time that Hamilton won a Formula 1 Grand Prix was the initial Saudi Arabian GP of 2021, and since then, the best he has managed to finish is P2, which happened on multiple occasions.

Even though the reason for this can be attributed to the nature of the car that he has been driving in the past two seasons, a lot of spectators have started criticizing Lewis Hamilton, which, as Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff feels, is offensive.

Hence, as he mentioned, he feels the need to 'protect' his driver, adding that Hamilton is indeed the best driver of all time.

"I need to protect him, because people have started to offend him, which is not right. It's complete nonsense, he's the best driver of all time. I pinch myself every day for working with the best of all time," Toto Wolff said.

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Lewis Hamilton reveals never getting an offer from Ferrari

It was with Mercedes that the Briton won six world championships and broke multiple F1 records set in the past by greats like Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna.

The spell of dominance that the team had over the grid lasted for a fantastically long period, and it is apparent that coming down from winning races by a large margin to competing in the midfield was not a great feeling for Lewis Hamilton.

Following this, it was rumored that Hamilton would likely join Ferrari, and his late contract extension fueled the speculations; however, it ultimately did not happen.

Regardless, he was asked if he had ever received an offer from the Maranello team; as Blick.ch quoted, he never did. Moreover, he further added that he was never ready to shift to Italy.

"Never. Okay, I'm sure we've had some trivial conversations. I know a lot of good people there, but I never felt ready to move to Italy," Hamilton stated.