Toto Wolff offers insight to how he controlled Hamilton-Rosberg relationship

Toto Wolff has opened up about how he managed the relationship between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. He suggests the former team-mates were like a volcano preparing to erupt. Hamilton won the first two World Championships as Rosberg went on to win the third and final title battle in 2016.

Wolff may have considered himself lucky when Rosberg announced his shock retirement just days after winning the championship. He describes the pairing, who were childhood friends, as difficult to manage.

"We didn’t have a situation where both drivers were fighting for a championship, which became a totally different ballgame [in 2014],” Wolff said in an interview on crash.

“You realise that both of them are complete alpha drivers. Both of them want to attempt to win the world championship, neither of them are slotted in as a number two.

“It is a little bit like a volcano that has started to shake and then eventually erupts. Every single controversy grew into something bigger and that became quite a distraction for the team to manage."

Hamilton and Rosberg collided on multiple occasions including in pivotal races at Spa and Barcelona. Wolff admits asking former driver Alain Prost for advice on how to manage the two drivers.

“I had a discussion with Alain Prost back in 2014 which gave me a good learning. I asked him the question about what went wrong between him and Senna," Wolff added.

“He said the biggest problem for him was the transparency of the management. They never knew what the agenda of the senior management in McLaren was.

“What I tried to implement very early in the team was the ultimate transparency - we talk about things. Sometimes it’s the inconvenient truth - things you don’t want to hear."

To be fair to Wolff and his team, they managed to control it pretty well.