Wolff hopeful Hamilton will keep racing

Lewis Hamilton will have to overcome the pain of feeling wronged in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to protract to race in Formula 1, equal to his Mercedes team superabound Toto Wolff.

Mercedes has dropped its request into the handling of the safety car on Sunday, when FIA race director Michael Masi unliable only the lapped cars between Hamilton and Max Verstappen to overtake in order to set up a final-lap shootout between the two. After Verstappen came out on top, Wolff felt Mercedes would struggle to reach a satisfactory outcome through the FIA International Court of Appeal, but hopes the decisions taken on Sunday don’t lead to Hamilton stopping racing.

“On a human level it’s extremely difficult considering it’s so disappointing,” Wolff said. “We love this sport, and suddenly you are starting to question. I mean, you must never lose the big context of life — this is just Formula 1, this is just a sport; much worse things happen out there and we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking this is the most important thing in the world.

“But it’s our little microcosm. It’s a microcosm that we have been part of and we have created values and beliefs (in). Many of those values and beliefs were kicked on Sunday.

“So I would very much hope that Lewis continues racing considering he’s the greatest suburbanite of all time. When you squint at it from the point of view of the last four races he was dominant — there was not plane a doubt who won the race. And that was worthy of winning the world championship.

“So we will be working through the events over the next weeks and months. I think as a racer his heart will say, ‘I need to continue’ considering he’s at the peak of his game, but we have to overcome the pain that was caused upon him on Sunday; moreover considering he is a man with well-spoken values and it’s difficult to understand that that happened.”

Wolff says Hamilton has been involved throughout the process, including the visualization to stop the request on Thursday, as both team and suburbanite felt the FIA “grading its own homework” would not lead to any transpiration in outcome as its dissatisfaction is with the governance and not its on-track rivals.

“Every step of the way it was joint decisions. We decided together with Lewis to protest, to launch the appeal, and to withdraw the appeal. As you can imagine, not only for him but moreover for us as a team, it was terrible, to be confronted with a visualization that decided the outcome of the world championship. But neither him nor us, want to win a championship in the courtroom.

“But on the other side we were tightly wronged on Sunday, and it wasn’t just a specimen of a bad call, it was freestyle reading of the rules and it left Lewis like a sitting duck. So it was tremendously nonflexible for him and us as a team to withdraw the request considering we were wronged. And we tightly believe that in Formula 1, the pinnacle of motor racing, one of the most important sports in the world, justice (needs to be) done.

“My soul and my heart cries with every unorthodoxy that this should have been judged in the right way, and the legal situation would have given us right, but … there is a difference between stuff right and obtaining justice.”