F1 News: Toto Wolff Commends Lewis Hamilton For "Admirable" Attitude Through Difficult 2022 - "Like Michael Schumacher"
Mercedes CEO and team principal Toto Wolff has spoken about how Lewis Hamilton dealt with the difficult 2022 season.
The team struggled with many issues on the W13 car and it ended up being the first season in Hamilton's F1 career that he has not won a single race.
The Austrian team principal spoke about Hamilton's "admirable" and "motivational" attitude during the 2022 season during an appearance on Formula 1's Beyond The Grid podcast. He explained:
“Extremely tough, because we have given him a tool that wasn’t capable of winning. On top of that, the drivers had a car that was unpredictable, unstable, good at times, not good at others – not really something you can work with and develop.
“But as a personality, how he has gone through the season is really admirable. There were times when the team felt down because of the non-performance and this is where he picked the people up and motivated them, and that is truly management and personality traits that I have not seen with a professional sportsman before.”
Wolff continued to liken Hamilton to F1 icon Michael Schumacher, being much more than just a driver. He added:
“Obviously there’s his involvement in developing the car, and his presence in the factory, but I think on the race weekends he has become such a senior figure.
“[He’s] maybe a little bit like Michael [Schumacher] was back in the day, or I think about Tom Brady in [American] football teams, that you become more than just a player or just a driver. You are emotionally part of the team, and he definitely is.
“He’s not, like we called them in the past, a contractor – drivers come, get paid and they leave for the next better occasion. He’s been with the team now ten years [and] he’s a team member.”