Mercedes Motorsport boss Toto Wolff believes Max Verstappen made the right call on joining Toro Rosso instead of their own junior driver programme.
Both Mercedes and Red Bull were in a battle behind the scenes to secure the talented 16-year-old, with the latter prevailing and soon announcing that he’ll be making his Formula 1 debut next year for Toro Rosso after just joining the energy-drinks company’s driver programme.
Verstappen will become the youngest driver to race in the sport and Wolff doesn’t believe Mercedes could guarantee the right tools for the driver programme to help nurture the Dutchman as soon as talks began to try and poach him.
“We had discussions with Max and Jos, which started two months ago, because Jos was exploring the opportunities for his son – and I believe that Max is a great talent,” Wolff told Autosport.
“We had two or three meetings, but because we are lacking a real programme, the opportunity we could have given to him would have been GP2, probably some testing in F1, and then maybe we could have had him in a Friday seat for a couple of races.
“But if we could not develop him, then the programme did not make sense. So it was all good discussions and I enjoyed it, but on the Sunday night after the Spielberg race [the Austrian GP], they got a great offer from Toro Rosso which gave them security for letting Max develop in F1.
“It is absolutely the right decision [for Verstappen] to take on this route. They have a multi-year relationship and it is something we don’t have on offer, so this is how it ended.”
Wolff compared the team’s driver programme with the one at Red Bull, conceding that Mercedes’ one doesn’t place as much emphasis on preparing their young drivers for F1 as Red Bull does.
“We have a junior programme where we support young drivers with F3 engines, and we have done that for many years,” said Wolff.
“Some of them [young drivers] have developed into F1, and some of them have developed into the DTM, and we are very happy about that. But it is not an institutionalised programme like Red Bull has.”
