Toto Wolff says his future is being sorted faster than Brexit talks as he added on Daimler AG’s strategy with regards to AMG Performance.
For months, the talk around the future of Wolff has continued on. Speculations have been strong in the period as him leaving Mercedes was prime, whether it was to join Aston Martin and or become the F1 boss even to replace Chase Carey.
While nothing can be said about the former but for the later, it is an end to the rumours as they have hired Stefano Domenicali. Wolff was approached initially but the talks did not go further as the Austrian was certain that there will be objections from F1 teams.
For an active team principal to switch and become the F1 boss within months was not the right idea. “The truth is I am in a good place with Mercedes,” said Wolff to media including Racefans.net, Motorsport Network, BBC, AMuS, Reuters and more. “In the process of having being asked whether I want to do this, we realised I am happy with my place.
“It is just a fact. I am happy in my place. Ferrari has the veto and has the veto in the new Concorde agreement It does not make a difference for me because I would have stayed where I am. It is protecting the person who runs F1. We just have to accept it,” Wolff summed up, as he joked about his future talks going better than Brexit.
“We are progressing more than the Brexit discussions, it is going well,” he said. We don’t have time to sit down to have a chat [extensively]. For my own contract, things are the same. Things are happening in the background and are negotiated. From Daimler and myself we want to continue in the partnership we have.
“It is not easy because it is about shareholding too,” summed up Wolff, as he then switched to the AMG topic, which was recently announced by Daimler AG as the German manufacturer wishes to enhance the Performance brand’s work even more from 2021 F1 season onward than how much is being done now.
“I believe we are not telling the hybrid story well enough with 50 per cent of technology that exist in these cars nor the energy in hybrid technology, energy recovery and sustainable systems in the future,” said Wolff. “The cost is important. We don’t want to make the same mistake and we are not only energy driven.
“We need something powerful, fuel efficient and at a reasonable price. It lies in the DNA Mercedes to race. The first ever Mercedes was a racing car. We build racing cars
The new strategy is to give the sub-brands a larger racing platform. We need to give specific touch and AMG is our performance platform.
“The team name will remain as Mercedes [for 2021 and beyond]. The chassis is going to be Mercedes. We are all Mercedes people. In addition to that, we represent AMG as a high performance brand. There is a technology transfer platform between the companies,” summed up Wolff.
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Here’s the Mercedes and AMG news
