With the Mercedes team principal and a former racing driver accompanying her in the passenger seat on hot laps, Susie Wolff would often be at the receiving end of some harsh criticism about her driving. The now 41-year-old even started doubting her driving skills, thanks to Toto Wolff’s constant criticism. However, her whole perception changed when she realized that it was actually her husband who was a bad passenger.
Once out doing hot laps with Lewis Hamilton, Wolff came back home, unimpressed with what he had experienced. The Austrian told his wife things did not go great with Hamilton, and she quickly understood that it was actually her husband that was the problem.
“I thought, ‘If you think that a 7-time world champion is not driving very well, then I’ve got no chance that you ever think I’m driving well.'”, she recalled on The Red Flags podcast.
The revelation helped Susie understand why Toto wasn’t very impressed when the two of them went out for hot laps. Wolff was famously captured with a phone in his hand, indicating the laps weren’t that ‘hot’.
Perhaps Wolff’s lukewarm responses stem from the fact that he was a racing driver himself. The Mercedes boss carries a fierce mentality behind the steering wheel of the car, and it nearly made him pay the ultimate price once.
When Wolff set out on a mission to set the lap record at the Nurburgring
In April 2009, Wolff marked the day he nearly killed himself while attempting to set a new lap record at the legendary Nurburgring. Driving a Porsche 911 RSR at 189mph, Wolff crashed into the steel guardrail at the Fuchsrohre Compression owing to a rear tire bursting.
Niki Lauda even tried to stop Wolff from attempting the record, calling the feat “idiotic”, but to no avail. Wolff has no memory of the crash, but the only surviving onboard camera following the crash showed him turning the car off, undoing his belt, and getting out of the car.
Even though they weren’t dating at the time, Susie was the first one to call Wolff after he had gained consciousness at the hospital. What was supposed to be a quick call to get an update and wish Wolff a speedy recovery turned out to be a call that lasted over an hour. The two found a lot in common, eventually leading to them tying the knot.
