Toto Wolff opens up about growing up with a learning experience, move to Mercedes and going up the ladder, F1 driver learning and more.
In a special High Performance Podcast, Mercedes F1 boss, Wolff, has opened up about whole lot of topics. The Austrian started talking about the meaning of ‘high performance’ as per him, as they then took him to his childhood experiences.
Wolff noted about losing his father at teenage and having a family situation in front him to tackle. He talks about the general scenario with young age experiences, trauma, anxiety, pressure, etc, going along with success and failure.
It is all a learning as Wolff then discussed his current life with a family of his own. Moving on the F1 subject, they discussed about starting in Williams and his eventual move to Mercedes. They talked about the success the team has had and how they achieved it.
A key factor was learning from their mistake and losing. The car had issues at certain F1 circuits but they pushed themselves and made it an all-rounder. It was made possible, having like-minded and good people around, which led to the recruitment topic.
Wolff noted about his instinct value, where he can understand if the person is right fit or not, but they do go through the qualifications too. He discussed the value of expanding their selection process to all universities and not just the big-shot ones.
He revealed a failure on his part with a recruitment too. When asked about what he brought to Mercedes, Wolff reckons it was ‘persistence’, making it about the team and its value – like putting the outfit’s say, whether in front of FIA and or F1.
They then discussed about identifying F1 talents and how they wish to instill the team value. Wolff doesn’t like selfishness, which he saw happening in 2014 F1 season, which began the whole episode on Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
Wolff noted his hands were tied as the drivers were already hired before his arrival and the hostility wasn’t actually a good thing towards the peak years as it brought negativity. The Mercedes chief added that he had no qualms in dropping drivers for a couple of races.
In fact, he made it clear to both Hamilton and Rosberg, as well, that whenever they are fighting, they have to think about Mercedes and Daimler too. In current scenario, Wolff will make sure that there is no repeat of what happened in those years within the team.
Towards the end of the discussion, Wolff talked about his gradual upward movement within Mercedes and now being at a position, where he looks at the larger interest, rather than just being the traditional F1 team principal.
Here’s the full discussion:
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