“Brutal transparency within the organisation”– Toto Wolff hits back Christian Horner for his comments after the race in Azerbaijan.
After Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Christian Horner criticized Toto Wolff for allegedly pushing the Mercedes under the bus for the poor performance in Baku.
Admitting his words, Wolff now counters Horner’s comments by claiming that Mercedes believes in brutal transparency, so there is a safe space in the team.
“Brutal transparency within the organisation. We need to be able to learn from our mistakes because there are just two options,” said Wolff to the GPFans.
“You make a mistake and you cover it up or you are not in a safe place to talk about it or utilise it as an opportunity to develop and learn. I have heard a sentence that when it stings it sticks. Painful moments in the races are the ones that make us progress the most.”
“In that respect, every weekend is about brutal analysis of what is happening in the days after the weekend and then utilising those learnings for the next race to come and for the future development of every component in the car.”
“So it comes back down to the culture of really being transparent with each other because we share the same objective, creating a safe environment and using the power of the collective intelligence if the people in order to solve the problems.”
It’s just Mercedes culture.
Wolff claims that it is the overall disappointment of the team, and normalcy after two abysmal weekends is not a behaviour you can expect from a team winning the championship for the last seven years.
“When you listen to a debrief today after a weekend where we finish first and second, you would think this is Williams debriefing from a weekend on a tenth place.
“I don’t mean that arrogantly; it is just a culture that is always sceptical, and we always believe we are not good enough and have to stay on our toes to maintain our success, and that starts with sometimes going where it hurts.
“They say that if you don’t go there then you are not going to improve as an organisation and it needs to start with all of us leading the organisation,” added Wolff.
