Toto Wolff has revealed that it was Carlos Sainz Snr who alerted him to the fact that Lewis Hamilton was in talks with Ferrari.

The move to Ferrari - which sent shockwaves through the sport when it was officially confirmed in February - meant that Mercedes would be losing its seven-time world champion, while Carlos Sainz Jr would be out of a job.

"I heard the bells ringing two weeks before," Wolff tells the High Performance podcast. "Yeah, the old man Sainz called me and said, this is what's happening.

"There were a few drivers' dads that rang me up that didn't before. So I thought, OK, there's something going on there.

"Then I sent a text to Fred Vasseur saying: 'You're taking our driver?', but I didn't get any response, which is very unusual for Fred. He's a good friend. So yeah, I saw it coming."

The Austrian insists that though he was losing the driver with whom he had won countless races and titles, his main concern was the reaction of sponsors and the little matter of finding a replacement for the seven-time world champion.

"I've had much worse in my life happening, real drama and trauma... this is not even moving the needle," he insisted. "It's just a new situation. It has risks and opportunities, risks in the sense of how do I inform the sponsors as quickly as possible, because it was leaking... and on the other side, what are we doing about next year?"

In the recently released book, Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane, Wolff gives further insight, admitting that it was inevitable that one day Hamilton would choose pastures new.

"I absolutely had it on my radar that Lewis would go," he says. "I just couldn't understand why he'd change to another team before we knew if we were going to be competitive."

On the other hand, with Hamilton pushing 40, Wolff realised that the clock was already ticking, and the Briton's decision saved the Mercedes boss a potentially difficult call further down the line.

"I like the situation," he insists. "It helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport's most iconic driver that we want to stop.

"There's a reason why we only signed a one-plus-one-year contract," he adds, referring to Hamilton's previous contract. "We're in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life."

In terms of that "shelf life", Wolff took inspiration from managers in other sports.

"I need to look at the next generation," says the Austrian. "It's the same in football. Managers like Sir Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola. They anticipated it in the performance of their top stars and brought in junior players that drove the team for the next years."

For Mercedes that appears to be George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, though there is talk of Valtteri Bottas being brought back in to the fold... just in case.