Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton and Mick Schumacher recently paid special visits to both Mercedes bases in Brackley and Brixworth, home of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains (HPP) in Brackley. During these meetings, they summarized the results of the season in an informal atmosphere, communicated with the teams and wished everyone a Merry Christmas. The team’s press service shared a video dedicated to these events.
In general, the production of racing power plants in modern Formula 1 is a universe apart, and when Mick, the team’s reserve driver, was asked to don a sterile white coat for a tour of the HPP base, he said: “It feels like I’m in the operating room!”
The end of the season is an important occasion, which is why the entire team gathered for a meeting with the team leader and the drivers, for whom it was obviously important to hear the words of the seven-time world champion: “I am very grateful for all the work you do here. Thanks to you we continue to progress, you inspire and encourage us!
I know that when we return to the race tracks, we will feel real joy if we can knock our rivals off the podium!”
George Russell was not present at this meeting and Wolff explained that the second driver was ill: “George is absent because he has taken time off – he is really ill.”
And this is how Lewis responded: “I was just about to ask: where is George? I have done this in the past to skip some test days because I don’t like tests! So when I heard yesterday that he was sick, I thought, “Aha, he has surpassed me, he has risen to the next level!”
At the team’s base in Brackley, Mick Schumacher mentioned his father, who drove for Mercedes in the last years of his Formula 1 career: “I heard from my father, when he was still in this team, that you should definitely come here talking to you. And I think I first came here in 2014 to work on the simulator for the first time, and then it was kept secret.
It’s great to be here again, it feels like I’m among family. I am very happy to work with the Mercedes team and will continue this work next year.”
Toto Wolff started the conversation on pre-holiday topics: “You know, in Austria we don’t have such strange customs as in the British Isles. For example, we don’t wear Christmas sweaters, even though it is a nice tradition, but we don’t wear sweaters like that…”
“Are you wearing leather pants?” – Lewis interrupted.
“The weather is not suitable for leather pants, it is too cold,” Toto replied. “But I wear them in the summer!”
After this, Lewis talked about how he and Mick had recently jumped with a parachute – it turns out that Schumacher had made many jumps with his father in his time:
“One day in Dubai at the airport Mick asked me, “Would you like to jump with us?” Moreover, he himself jumped with professional paratroopers. You have about a thousand jumps, right?
Mick confirmed this.
“I’m just an amateur compared to him,” Hamilton continued. “So Mick invited me to join them, and when I asked what needed to be done, he promised I would get all the necessary instructions on the plane when we took off!.”
The crowd responded to these words with cheerful laughter. And when the meeting with the sitters was over, the guests were greeted with a long applause.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
