Toto Wolff, as team principal of Mercedes, has seen the highest of highs and lowest of lows. Having gone through both success and failure, Wolff seems like the right person to lead Mercedes. However, a man of his stature can at times falter or ‘cross the line.’ In such cases, the Mercedes boss does not mind being remorseful.
Wolff said to Bild as per FormulaPassion, “I believe that many employees are motivated when they see that their boss is ambitious. But sometimes I cross the limit. Then I have to take a chamomile tea before the interviews, to calm me down. If I have been too harsh, on Monday I go back to factory and I apologize. This is part of good leadership. But I must not overdo it too often.”
Notably, the last two years have been tough for Wolff, Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, and everyone else who is associated with Mercedes. From winning eight back-to-back constructors’ championships, they have won just one race in the last two seasons. They finished P3 last year and P2 this time. However, performance-wise they are miles behind from Red Bull.
Toto Wolff and Mercedes’ problems post 2021
The 2022 F1 season marked a new dawn for the sport as new regulations came out. Despite having so much of expectations from the team, Mercedes failed to recreate the magic they had in the turbo-hybrid era. Thus, began the start of their endless problems.
Toto Wolff acknowledged the mistakes made by the team. They failed to understand how the car would behave in the new regulations and ended up making the W13 that suffered from porpoising.
They rectified the porpoising issue in 2023 with the W14, but the other problems remained. They also canceled out their so-called zero sidepod from 2022 and embarked on a new sidepod. However, problems such as poor top speed, and unstable rear end were still there.
Despite repeated complaints from Hamilton, the team favored solving the problems that seemed very urgent, and one after another they went for every issue within the car. In doing so, Red Bull went miles ahead of them in the meantime.
