Toto Wolff puts Lewis Hamilton's 'emotional' F1 boss in his place over Ferrari 'cheating' claim

Wolff stood in conversation looking down on Vasseur at F1 track, wearing black Mercedes kit and red Ferrari jacket respectively — Photo: © IMAGO

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Toto Wolff puts Lewis Hamilton's 'emotional' F1 boss in his place over Ferrari 'cheating' claim

Wolff and Vasseur have been involved in a spat via F1's media

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Friday 10 July 2026 09:44

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Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff has said emotions likely got in the way of Fred Vasseur's judgement when he misunderstood comments from his rival team boss.

The Silver Arrows and the Scuderia are the only two outfits to have drivers win a grand prix under the new regulations cycle in F1, with Kimi Antonelli, George Russell, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc making up the top four in the championship in that order.

Though it was Mercedes that got a flying start out of the blocks at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Ferrari have capitalised on their rival's reliability issues and slowly began to catch up thanks to major upgrades packages.

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These upgrades have benefitted former Mercedes star Hamilton and led Wolff to publicly question Ferrari's rate of development, saying: "Ferrari has piled on countless modifications...I suspect they’ll soon hit their budget limit, because we simply don’t have the financial flexibility to do everything they do. We’ll have to see where that takes them."

But Hamilton's current boss Vasseur took Wolff's statement as an indication that he was accusing Ferrari of not bringing their upgrades by the book, responding with: "When Red Bull is developing or when Mercedes is developing, they are genius. When we are developing, we are cheating."

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Wolff 'fine' with Vasseur's 'cheating' confusion

Speaking to Sky Sports after Vasseur disagreed very publicly with Wolff's comments, the Mercedes F1 boss said: "Fred is very emotional."

The Silver Arrows team principal then offered some advice to the Scuderia team principal, suggesting he shouldn't get all his information from the media headlines.

"If you would have read my comments, rather than just a headline, he would have seen that what I said was an observation and would be interesting to see how much updates one can pull out at the end of the season," the Austrian continued.

Wolff then clarified that the duo's relationship hasn't been harmed by the incident, saying:"But it’s just the emotionality that we all have and being passionate about team success, and I’m fine with that.”

When asked if he felt Vasseur took his comments out of context, Wolff replied: "I know it was misunderstood.

"If I say things that I want to be understood, I will do so too, but in that case, I didn’t mean it really."

F1 Ferrari Mercedes Toto Wolff 2026 regulations Fred Vasseur