Lewis Hamilton is in the final years of his Formula 1 career with Ferrari, but Toto Wolff has claimed nobody will remember his time with the Italian team.

Toto Wolff has boldly stated that the final years of Lewis Hamilton’s career with Ferrari will be forgotten. The 40-year-old Brit is currently winding down his illustrious Formula 1 career with the Italian team, hoping to clinch an eighth drivers’ title before he hangs up his helmet.

However, the odds of this happening seem slim at present, given a challenging first season in Ferrari red. Hamilton has yet to grace the F1 podium after a Grand Prix with Ferrari, although he did secure a sprint race victory in Shanghai earlier this year.

Regardless, his reputation as potentially the greatest driver ever to grace the sport is already cemented. He shares the honour of being a seven-time champion with Michael Schumacher and boasts an impressive 105 Grand Prix victories – 14 more than the legendary German.

Much of this success was achieved during his 12-season stint as a Mercedes driver. After leaving McLaren to join the Silver Arrows in 2013, he bagged six additional titles to add to his 2008 win, which came in just his second year in F1, all under the watchful eye of Wolff as his team principal.

The Austrian stalwart insists that his long-time ally’s legacy is safe, regardless of how the remainder of his career with Ferrari pans out. He cited Schumacher’s three-year winless stretch with Mercedes towards the end of his F1 career as evidence that such a dry spell does not diminish the triumphs that preceded it.

“He is going to retire [and] nobody is going to ever know that he was at Ferrari at the end,” Wolff told GPBlog. “Who thinks about the Schumacher and Mercedes time? That is not relevant for Schumacher’s career.”

Hamilton has struggled to settle into his new environment and, despite a promising showing at last Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix where he climbed from 10th on the grid due to a penalty to claim sixth place, the Briton acknowledged he remains “still not 100 percent comfortable in the car”.

However, Wolff maintains he harbours no sympathy for his former driver and friend.The Austrian continued: “No one should ever feel pity for Lewis Hamilton, because he is a monster of a driver. There were moments of not happiness with us, many times. I think all the reasons he had to go to Ferrari are still valid today.

“He needed a change of environment and we needed a change of environment. We were not as competitive as we would have wished [and] Ferrari looked better. Every racing driver wants to race in Ferrari. He likes the colour red anyway. The deal that was on the table was very good.

“Like I said, these reasons are still valid today. It is clear that there are moments of big frustration, but he had those frustrations with us as well. He just needs another good race weekend or two and then we are going to see a very different Lewis Hamilton.’”