Toto Wolff to keep George Russell and Valtteri Bottas waiting on Mercedes second-seat decision

Mercedes

Wolff to keep Russell and Bottas waiting on Mercedes second-seat decision

Lewis Hamilton has committed himself to Mercedes for 2022 and 2023

Ian Parkes

Saturday 3 July 2021 14:39

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is to keep George Russell and Valtteri Bottas waiting as to who will partner Lewis Hamilton for the next two F1 seasons.

Hamilton has committed himself to Mercedes by signing a two-year extension that will take him through to the end of 2023 when he will be 38.

The question now is whether Mercedes will finally promote Russell after a three-year spell with Williams or continue with Bottas who is currently in his fifth season with the team.

Addressing the issue on Sky Sports F1, Wolff said: "So today is about Lewis and the announcement.

"We don't want to end up in a situation today that we are discussing when to sign the next contract.

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"We are all happy we have signed Lewis today and in the next weeks and months we are going to look at the second seat."

Wolff and Hamilton learn from "mistakes"

The signing of Hamilton's new deal so early this year is in stark contrast to what unfolded last season when numerous factors hampered negotiations.

It resulted in Hamilton not putting pen to paper on only a one-year contract until early February.

Conceding to learning from the errors of those ways, Wolff confirmed this deal was signed on Friday in Austria and that talks had all been "very easy".

He added: "We didn't want to make the mistakes we did last time where we dragged on over the whole year, simply because we were busy racing.

"This time we thought that it's a more difficult championship and we want to have the stability in the team. Lewis and I were pretty clear early on this continuing."