Toto Wolff featured on F1 Beyond The Grid podcast as he spoke on loss of Niki Lauda, the negativity amid heated rivalry, current time, future and more.
Wolff featured on the F1 Beyond The Grid podcast for the second time as the Mercedes chief opened up talking about the current time with Mercedes and getting into one of the best jobs in the world, where he is not just leading a team but also is a shareholder.
They discuss about settling in Oxford as Wolff recalled a team principals’ gathering he did which went haywire. He never called them together again apart from few handful. They started talking about his role with Mercedes and the future.
Links with Aston Martin was discussed as well, as he revealed that he turned down the offer to move to automotive side of the Daimler Group. His focus remains the motor racing side, especially F1 as he still yearns to achieve more despite the titles coming in.
Wolff admitted that winning in the manner they are doing is not great as he hopes for fights against Ferrari and or Red Bull Racing, but it is not in his hands. The success was incomplete with Lauda, with whom he a solid relationship.
They did not start off well together but gradually worked hand-in-hand, so much so, that he misses Lauda everyday of his life. The topic led to the discussion around Nurburgring and Nordschleife, where stories of changing the latter is doing rounds.
The talk is to tweak the circuit in a manner for F1 and hold grand prix once in four years. However, Wolff is not fan of the said plan as he feels, there is no way they can change enough without compromising the old self of the circuit – it will never be the same.
And so, he is against the idea. Moving on to the driver topics, Wolff praised Valtteri Bottas’ resilience despite being put up against the might of Lewis Hamilton. The Finn has dug deep all these years and continues to do so to beat the Brit, who pushes on as well.
Despite with all the wins and accolades – something both Hamilton and Wolff are not fan of counting – the Brit continues to push through. The one thing the Austrian enjoys at the moment is less negativity within the garage, which was not the case until 2016.
Wolff cannot explain why and how it all turned so sour but he admits that the situation until 2016 when Hamilton and Rosberg went head-to-head, it wasn’t easy to handle and brought the whole mood of the team down into a negative spiral.
He feels good now and a question by Tom Clarkson to bring in Max Verstappen, popped Wolff to state they themselves have Esteban Ocon and George Russell in their bank. He praised the Dutchman but he knows that his loyalty lays with Red Bull.
At the same time on Sebastian Vettel, like before, Wolff says they certainly thought about it but considering they have already have Hamilton and Bottas along with two other promising racers – Ocon and Russell – they never went ahead with it.
Concluding the podcast, Wolff talked about the future course of F1, especially with the decision of Honda to leave and whether electric will takeover. The Austrian did not think electric will be end all but more like the current hybrid module.
Here is the link to the podcast as FOM prohibits embedding: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdWRpb2Jvb20uY29tL2NoYW5uZWxzLzQ5NjQzMzkucnNz/episode/dGFnOmF1ZGlvYm9vbS5jb20sMjAyMC0xMC0yMDovcG9zdHMvNzcxMDE1Mg?hl=en-IN&ved=2ahUKEwjHqeDBnMXsAhX4IbcAHaOJD3kQieUEegQIDhAF&ep=6
Here’s the last episode of F1 Nation
Here’s F1 Beyond The Grid Podcast having Chase Carey