Jos Verstappen Makes Bold Statement Regarding Max Verstappen-Mercedes Partnership as Ultimate Blame Falls on Toto Wolff

When Max Verstappen was young, his incredible talent meant that several top teams eyed him and wanted to secure his services. Signing a special talent like Verstappen always required some hard and smart work on the team’s behalf. However, this was something that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff failed to do.

Wolff, despite having the chance to bring Verstappen into the team, failed to make turn it into reality. The Mercedes boss, however, regrets his failure now, after missing out on signing a generational talent like Verstappen, who ended up joining their rivals Red Bull.

“Do I regret missing out on Max? Certainly. But it wasn’t an option back in the day,” revealed the 51-year-old on this in a report published by ESPN. Furthermore, he added that he was happy with the pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at the time.

However, Wolff also doubted whether the driver pair of Hamilton and Verstappen would have worked at the Brackley. Given that both the stars have an agonizing will to challenge for world titles and wouldn’t have accepted a second-driver role, things might not have worked if they were together.

Jos Verstappen knows whom to blame

Max Verstappen’s father Jos, knows who is to blame for the Verstappen-Mercedes partnership not turning into reality. Speaking about it to La Gazzetta dello Sport, the elder Verstappen spoke about an incident involving Toto Wolff.

”We went to his (Wolff’s) house in Vienna,” said Verstappen Sr. We had a serious discussion, but I don’t think Toto had followed him much in karting and really knew how special Max was. Otherwise, he would have signed him blindfolded, even if Mercedes didn’t have a junior program,” he further asserted as per the report by SilverArrows.

#OnThisDay in 2016, Max Verstappen became F1’s youngest race winner on his debut for Red Bull 🏁

Aged 18 years and 228 days, Max’s win saw him break Sebastian Vettel’s previous record by two and a half years 🏆#F1 #SpanishGP #Autosport pic.twitter.com/2kcDKaw2KT

— Autosport (@autosport) May 15, 2022

Following the fallout between the two parties, Max Verstappen signed for the Red Bull junior programme very soon, and got his first shot behind the wheel at the age of 16. Following this, he debuted in F1 with Toro Rosso in 2015, followed by his Red Bull debut in 2016.

Helmut Marko on Max Verstappen-Wolff situation

Despite being one of the best team principals of modern-day Formula 1, Toto Wolff was recently mocked by Helmut Marko. Marko, who’s the chief advisor at Red Bull, shared how baffled he was to learn that Wolff failed to notice Verstappen’s talent.

“His talent would not have been visible enough in Formula 3 but then I don’t know what exactly Toto has been looking at,” remarked the 80-year-old to Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

Max Verstappen at the age of 16 made his Formula 1 free practice debut at Suzuka in 2014 pic.twitter.com/VlL1drS9oP https://t.co/Rk5y9qm221

— Matt³³⁺¹⁶ | 🇬🇧SILVERSTONE🇬🇧 (@FM1_3316) June 10, 2023

Marko, who had spotted the Dutchman at a young age, however, was happy that the deal with Mercedes was off and he could bring him over to the Milton-Keynes-based outfit. About this, the Red Bull mastermind revealed as per PlanetF1, “When I saw Max busy for a while at the Norisring, it was already completely clear to me that he had something special.”

Fast forward to 2023, Verstappen has led Red Bull to two world championship victories, and their first constructors’ glory since 2013. As things stand, Verstappen and Red Bull are the heavy favorites to retain their crown once again.