Toto Wolff can boast about building his billion-dollar fortune from scratch. He grew up in a humble household and faced challenging circumstances, especially after losing his father to brain cancer at a young age. Wolff admitted that the illness strained their relationship in his father’s final days but emphasized that it was neither of their faults.
The Mercedes Team Principal was just six or seven years old when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He battled the illness until Wolff was 15, which is when he passed away.
Wolff highlighted that his father couldn’t be present to raise and groom him as a young man. He was a ‘charismatic’ and ‘intelligent’ person but Wolff could not learn those qualities from him during his formative years.
“I was very close to him when we were young, but then obviously when you go through such a dramatic illness, where slowly but surely your personality changes, many last years, the relationship was pretty bad,” Wolff said on The High Performance Podcast.
A chronic disease as serious as cancer affecting a family member, leading to his or her demise is naturally a seismic shock for any individual’s mental space. For Wolff, to deal with this at such a young age, must have been extremely challenging.
The tough times and the unfortunate relationship he had with his father during his last days changed Wolff. After his passing, Wolff became more resilient, and the financial hardship he and his family endured, drove him to chase wealth.
Years of hard work finally brought him to where he is today, but the learnings since his father’s passing helped him deal with difficult situations even in his professional career now.
How Wolff has toughened up to deal with adversity
The host of the podcast asked Wolff whether the “f**ked up upbringing” he mentioned had helped him deal with adverse situations better. The Austrian replied that it certainly helped him tackle any challenges that came his way as a team boss, having faced much worse situations during his childhood.
While the issues he faced personally and professionally cannot be compared, Wolff’s approach became quite pragmatic. “Because of my difficult upbringing, I don’t struggle to make decisions. It comes quite naturally to me,” the 52-year-old insisted.
That is why, when Lewis Hamilton came up to him to confirm his exit from Mercedes, Wolff was surprised but was able to process it quickly and think about the team’s future.
Naturally, it was a big loss for Wolff and his team to lose a seven-time World Champion. Still, he understood that practically, they had to move on and take different paths. He admitted that it was an “instinctive” choice to look at Kimi Antonelli as Hamilton’s successor and he had the clarity to weigh up all his options before making the right call.
