TOTO WOLFF has mocked world champion Max Verstappen and Red Bull team principal Christian Horner by insisting he would rather work “alone” than with them.
The Mercedes boss locked horns with Red Bull last year during the two teams’ dramatic fight for the drivers’ championship.
Wolff has won seven drivers’ championships since joining Mercedes in 2013
Horner clinched the world title with Verstappen last year
Verstappen ended up coming out on top after overtaking Lewis Hamilton on the final lap of the last race in Abu Dhabi.
And Wolff’s latest comments suggest that there is still no love lost between the rivals.
German newspaper Bild conducted a Q&A with Wolff in which one of the questions read: “Who would you rather have from Red Bull in your team: Verstappen as driver, team boss Christian Horner or head of motorsport Dr. Helmut Marko?”
And Wolff simply replied: “I’d rather do it alone.”
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Wolff and Horner have had a long-standing rivalry since the Austrian arrived at Mercedes in 2013.
And in the latest series of Netflix’s Drive to Survive, Horner diminished Wolff’s achievements at the F1 giants.
He said: “What you have to remember about Toto is he has inherited something that is already well-oiled.
“He has not had to build anything. He operates the team in a much different way to me.”
It was Mercedes who ended up getting the better of Red Bull in the opening weekend of the 2022 season in Bahrain.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez both looked set for podium finishes in the closing stages of the race before reliability issues saw them fail to finish.
This enabled Hamilton and Mercedes to pick up a surprise third place behind the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
Hamilton’s new teammate George Russell finished fourth, with Mercedes hoping to build on that result in Saudi Arabia this weekend.
