Mercedes's Team Principal Toto Wolff never believed that Lewis Hamilton would retire after the Abu Dhabi events. Even after missing out on what would have been a record-breaking eight title in a controversial final round, Hamilton is ready to take on the challenge offered by the new regulations, and is dead set on clinching another WDC.

Wolff said to selected media outlets, including MotorLat, that he believes the British driver has made the right choice by going offline after the last race, focusing on his recovery:

"I think that what he did was absolutely right, to take himself out of the micro cosmos of Formula 1 and step aside, black out socially. He has come back in a great mindset, he's positive, he's determined, and the yet again adversity that was thrown at him will make him stronger."

"As he said, it's attack mode," he highlighted.

Retiring was never an option for him, according to Wolff, but newly knighted Sir Hamilton needed "time" to approach his sixteenth season in the top championship at his best:

"I was never concerned that he was leaving. Within the team, we knew that he needed to take the time to reflect on things and, particularly, to understand how he would come back in the best possible frame of mind. So, there was on our side no worries about him not coming back." 

An important role in the upcoming season will be played by the budget cap as, after a further 5m decrease to the limit set in the last season, it will force the teams, especially the top ones, to choose wisely what and how to upgrade the cars.

Asked if the budget cap will make the 2022 a write-off becuase of the difficulty in making work both the improvement area and the financial issues, Wolff denied, explaining that while it will definitely halter the opportunity of redesigning the car from scratch in case of the W13 not performing as well as it should, minor upgrades have been scheduled :

"It is one side whether you can really change concepts technically, when sometimes you bank on a direction that's it, and then the added pressure of the cost cap makes it very difficult to change the basic, change the car fundamentally."

"Because everything is planned, every upgrade and their related costs are planned, and therefore we are much more restricted in our ability of implement creative process onto the car."

Wolff also talked about how it was to plan such a different challenger in 2021 while also thinking about ways to improve the model in use at the time to compete for the title. Even if everything went according to the pre season planning, the jury is still out on actually determining how much successful it was.

"There weren't major issues, I think that from the beginning of the 2021 season we had a precise, well mapped up plan of how we would continue the development of the W12 last year no matter how the championship would pan out. 

"We followed that plan, that timeline, and it's all coming well together at the moment, we fired out our car in December, that's the earliest we have ever done it. Although there is no guarantee for success, so we just need to keep on working, hopefully driving it today with the wind, see whether it performs as expected in the next few tests, in Barcelona and Bahrain that may be more representative of the conditions."

"It's encouraging at the moment, but there's literally nothing for granted," he concluded.