{"id":287557,"date":"2023-09-14T01:36:05","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T01:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsloveme.com\/?p=287557"},"modified":"2023-09-14T01:36:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T01:36:05","slug":"wolff-says-that-hamilton-and-verstappen-came-close-to-being-teammates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsloveme.com\/racing\/f1\/wolff-says-that-hamilton-and-verstappen-came-close-to-being-teammates\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolff says that Hamilton and Verstappen came close to being teammates"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>Toto Wolff reveals that Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen came close to becoming teammates but Mercedes &#8216;couldn&#8217;t give&#8217; Red Bull driver a seat because of Nico Rosberg<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Wolff has revealed that he came close to signing Verstappen as a youngster\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>However, there was not enough space in Mercedes for them to sign Verstappen<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Nico Rosberg was holding a seat alongside Hamilton for Mercedes at the time<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has revealed that he came close to signing Max Verstappen as a youngster but couldn&#8217;t offer him a guaranteed seat alongside Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n<p>With the Singapore Grand Prix coming up this weekend, Verstappen could win his 11th consecutive race and move closer to a third successive world title.<\/p>\n<p>The Red Bull driver is without a doubt the best in the world on current form, and he could have been part of the Mercedes team before joining Red Bull in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to F1&#8217;s Beyond the Grid podcast, Wolf opened up on how close he came to signing a young Verstappen.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Max was very good in karting, was good in F3, and it was clear that there&#8217;s a big one that&#8217;s growing,&#8217; he said.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/14\/00\/75408865-12516053-image-a-6_1694648683460.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Toto Wolff has revealed that he came close to signing Max Verstappen as a youngster<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/14\/00\/75408873-12516053-image-a-7_1694648689838.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>The move could have seen Verstappen join Lewis Hamilton as part of Mercedes<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/14\/00\/75408863-12516053-image-a-8_1694648704525.jpg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>However, Mercedes couldn&#8217;t offer him a guaranteed seat alongside Hamilton<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;We talked to them in the initial phases, and it was a nice discussion with (his dad) Jos and with Max involved as well.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>However, Wolff continued to reveal that they could not offer a seat to the youngster at the time due to the lack of space as Nico Rosberg was alongside Hamilton.<\/p>\n<p>He continued:\u00a0&#8216;But it was clear that we couldn&#8217;t give him a seat because we had Nico and we had Lewis.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;We offered the support in F2 but, since Red Bull was able to offer them the AlphaTauri seat, or Toro Rosso back in the day, it got Max into the seat.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Verstappen opted to join Red Bull while Rosberg shocked the F1 world by retiring just a year after winning the title.<\/p>\n<p>It could have all been so different for Hamilton and Verstappen, who became rivals when they could have been teammates.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sport\/formulaone\/article-12516053\/Toto-Wolff-Lewis-Hamilton-Max-Verstappen-Mercedes-Red-Bull-Nico-Rosberg.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Toto Wolff reveals that Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen came close to becoming teammates but Mercedes &#8216;couldn&#8217;t give&#8217; Red Bull<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wolff says that Hamilton and Verstappen came close to being teammates - Sports Love Me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsloveme.com\/racing\/f1\/wolff-says-that-hamilton-and-verstappen-came-close-to-being-teammates\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wolff says that Hamilton and Verstappen came close to being teammates - Sports Love Me\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Toto Wolff reveals that Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen came close to becoming teammates but Mercedes &#8216;couldn&#8217;t give&#8217; 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