The boss of Mercedes got criticized by Mintzlaff during the Miami Grand Prix weekend. Mintzlaff, the managing director of the energy drinks company, was upset that Mercedes was trying to get Verstappen to leave his current team.
Mintzlaff told Bild Am Sonntag: “I understand the pressure that Toto Wolff and perhaps other teams have after years of being behind. But I think Toto Wolff should concentrate on his challenges. He has enough of those.
“And it also has something to do with respect. If I keep talking about the personnel of other teams, that’s not right.”
Wolff doesn’t care much about what Mintzlaff said. He thinks it doesn’t matter.
“I don’t know what this guy is commenting on,” said Wolff. “It has no relevance for me.”
There were rumors that Mercedes wanted to meet Verstappen this week to talk about a deal for 2025. But Wolff says those rumors aren’t true.
“We have lots of meetings,” he said. “I can’t really say [anything definite] about the second driver. I think we’ve talked about the possibilities, and I want to be fair to these guys and not make it look like we are playing chess with humans because we are not doing that.
“We want to take our time, see where Max’s thinking goes and, at the same time, monitor the other drivers.
“Carlos [Sainz] was very strong today again and that’s why we are a little bit on observation mode at the moment.”
While Mercedes waits to see what Verstappen decides, another option is junior driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
The Italian youngster was at the centre of speculation over the Miami weekend about a potential step up to Williams soon, with it understood that the squad has asked the FIA for an F1 superlicence exemption for him because he is under 18.
Wolff said that Mercedes has no interest in him racing in F1 now as it wants him to focus on doing his best in F2.
“So many stories were created, and it doesn’t do him any favours because he needs to concentrate on his F2 campaign,” added Wolff.
“He’s doing lots of testing for us in order to bring him up to speed and I think this decision of the second driver is weeks if not months away. We didn’t make any approach to the FIA about getting an earlier release.”
