'Drive To Survive' Reveals That Mercedes Boss Toto Wolff Considered Max Verstappen To Replace Lewis Hamilton

The seventh season of Netflix's Formula 1: Drive To Survive will be released on Friday. But ahead of the new season premiere, a new clip is making the rounds that shows that when faced with having to replace seven-time champion, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff at least considered the idea of trying to poach Red Bull star and reigning four-time world champion Max Verstappen from Red Bull.

Ahead of the 2024 season, Lewis Hamilton made the massive announcement that for the 2025 season he would move to Ferrari.

There had always been rumors of Hamilton one day racing in Ferrari red, but the news still caught a lot of people off guard, including Wolff who had to fill Mercedes' second seat alongside George Russell.

This became one of the biggest pieces of the drivers' market puzzle for 2025, and as you can see in this clip where Wolff is eating breakfast with his wife, the managing director of F1 Academy, while looking at one of the nicest views I've ever seen. Pretty much everyone, including Verstappen, was on his mind.

"So Carlos is somebody to look at, he's had some really good performances," Wolff said, referring to Carlos Sainz, the driver Hamilton replaced at Ferrari and who ultimately signed a deal with Williams.

"Fernando [Alonso], I mean, race pace, racecraft is still very good," Wolff continued, before his wife pointed out that any deal with Alonso would likely be short-term given that the two- time champion who currently drives for Aston Martin is 43 years old.

Then came the bombshell. Susie asked if Verstappen was an option.

"I think he is. But, if you win all the races in a season, I think he is," Wolff said. "I haven't spoken to him because I promised Lewis I wouldn't talk to him but I will have the conversation now."

Woah. Quite a bit to unpack there.

Of course, any team would be happy to get Verstappen on their books, and it would have been a tall order to get the Durchman onboard for 2025 given he is still under contract at Red Bull.

What stunned me more was that Hamilton had asked Wolff not to speak to Verstappen.

The two, of course, had a titanic, and at times ugly, title battle in 2021, so maybe Lewis didn't keep on working with him for that reason.

However, the bigger problem would likely have been having two lead drivers, something Mercedes experienced in 2016 with Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, which, while Rosberg won the title, was a bit of a headache for the team.

Of course, the driver who ended up at Mercedes was Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who has long been considered the future of the team and impressed last season in Formula 2.