Mercedes: Max Verstappen right to choose Toro Rosso F1 offer

AUTOSPORT revealed at the start of August that Verstappen and his father Jos held offers from both Red Bull and Mercedes.

The Red Bull interest developed into a shock 2015 F1 seat with Toro Rosso - an option Mercedes motorsport chief Toto Wolff says he has no qualms about the Verstappens taking as he could not offer a development programme comparable to Red Bull's young driver scheme.

"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 said.

"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 says that he was not in a position to offer anything as concrete, because his plans for a Mercedes young driver academy are still only in the early stages.

"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."

Although Mercedes wants to create a proper young driver programme, progress on that is on hold until the F1 world title battle is over.

"We have been looking into the situation because I believe the current generation of F3 drivers are very good," Wolff said.

"We have seen that in some years you have not only one driver but a couple who have the potential to develop into F1, and here we go: this year we have a couple of them.

"That is why we have started to explore carefully the possibility of doing a junior programme. But we haven't really followed it up in a very intense way because our objective number one is to win the world championship."