{"id":417529,"date":"2025-09-12T04:19:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T04:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417529\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T04:19:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T04:19:13","slug":"george-russell-could-be-giving-toto-wolff-a-taste-of-his-own-medicine-amid-contract-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/417529\/","title":{"rendered":"George Russell could be giving Toto Wolff a taste of his own medicine amid contract talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nico Rosberg<\/a>, who drove for the Mercedes<\/a> Formula 1 team from 2010 to 2016, has argued that George Russell<\/a> is playing team chief Toto Wolff at his own game amid the ongoing contract negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both Russell and his rookie team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> are due to be out of contract with the Brackley outfit at the end of the current season. While Wolff has confirmed that both drivers are the focus of the future for the team, despite earlier rumours linking Max Verstappen<\/a> to a blockbuster move to Mercedes, no contract extensions have been announced at this time.<\/p>\n

Rosberg claimed during an appearance on the Sky Sports F1 Show<\/a> podcast that Wolff is “horrible to negotiate with” but that Russell is now giving the team chief a taste of his own medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrible to negotiate with Toto and he just disappears off planet Earth when you\u2019re trying to get better terms. He just disappears and just doesn\u2019t even let you talk with him. It\u2019s horrible. I suffered a lot,\u201d Rosberg explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut now, it\u2019s George doing the kind of reverse to Toto. It\u2019s like he\u2019s fighting Toto with his own medicine. George apparently is just not happy with a couple of terms in the contract. George is a Mercedes junior, so certainly he won\u2019t be on a Lando Norris-level salary, by far and away not, and George feels Lando is equal to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge, by any means, can drive at Lando\u2019s level and can win races and championships if he has the car. So of course, he will feel a little bit of that\u2019s not quite fair, that I\u2019m so far away from Lando\u2019s salary.”<\/p>\n

Rosberg also noted that the sponsor commitments for drivers have increased.<\/p>\n

\"George <\/p>\n

George Russell, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Clive Rose \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then also, there\u2019s things like sponsor days,” he continued. “Nowadays, these teams have so many sponsors, paying so much money, and the only way for a team to give back to a sponsor is of course logo space, which is limited. And they want driver time. They want their customers to be able to meet George Russell, and so they\u2019re using the drivers so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not allowed to say it\u2019s painful for us, because everybody watching will be like, \u2018shut up, you know, you earn so much money, all you have to do is go to a sponsor event, shake some hands, take some pictures, and I\u2019m saying it\u2019s painful\u2019, but it is really painful!<\/p>\n

\u201cSo George also there, will try and reduce.. The number can go up to like 60 days or something, 60 in 365 days. That\u2019s a lot of days. And some of those 60 days are split into half-days. So it can actually be like 80 days. That\u2019s a lot, like when all we want to do is go to the Nordschleife and go racing in GT3 cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nico Rosberg, who drove for the Mercedes Formula 1 team from 2010 to 2016, has argued that George…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,137089,707,4200,9824,137088,4859,47791,143050,969,79,970,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-417529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-f1-italian-grand-prix-2025","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-george-russell","13":"tag-italian-gp","14":"tag-mercedes","15":"tag-nico-rosberg","16":"tag-nico-rosberg-george-russell-could-be-giving-toto-wolff-a-taste-of-his-own-medicine-amid-contract-talks","17":"tag-nosyndicate","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-trendingteam","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115189407307344200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}