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Why the Mercedes F1 team is getting involved in yacht racing

The Mercedes Formula One team has joined forces with British sailor Ben Ainslie in a quest to win the America's Cup for Great Britain's Royal Yacht Squadron.

The America's Cup is the oldest international trophy in sport, predating the Olympics by 45 years, but has not been won by a British team since it was first held as a race around the Isle of Wight in 1851. The Ineos Britannia team, skippered by Ainslie, hopes to change that by working closely with British-based Mercedes team to build a yacht capable of defeating the current holders, Emirates Team New Zealand.

The link-up between the two teams comes via Ineos, which owns a third of the F1 team and is the main backer of Ineos Britannia. The sailing team will be based at Mercedes' headquarters in Brackley, leaning on the engineering resources of various departments via the F1 team's Mercedes Applied Science division.

Mercedes is expecting to have as many as 50 people working on the early design process of the yacht once the regulations, date and location for the 37th America's Cup are agreed in mid-November by New Zealand and Great Britain. Mercedes' chief technical officer, James Allison, who recently took a step back from the F1 side of the company, will be the technical lead on the yacht project.

Shouldn't Mercedes be focusing on F1, not yachts?

While the project has an obvious commercial tie-up via Ineos, Mercedes is also keen to make the project work for the engineering benefit of the F1 team. The America's Cup is often known as 'F1 on water', and clear links can be made between the hydrodynamics that allow a racing yacht to "fly" on its foils in the sea and the aerodynamics that keep an F1 car pinned to the track.

But Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says the joint project will offer more than just a new revenue stream for the team through Mercedes Applied Science.

"We have had situations where engineers said, we have done this for seven years -- and many were even longer -- with seven world championships and they are asking where the next challenge is," Wolff said. "And it doesn't go any bigger than the challenge of winning the America's Cup as Challenger of Record.

"You are being the underdog, so you need to do an even better job. So that is of benefit because we retain the ability in-house and they are not going elsewhere -- within the industry or outside. Some of the people throughout the departments have said this is a nice challenge that they would like to take up for the next three or five years and gain some understanding, which probably can be deployed back into Formula One.

"It's almost like an activity that is so competitive that you need all your cognitive and intellectual concentration and that becomes an advantage when you are looking back into Formula One and it takes you out of your comfort zone."

Part of the reason the Mercedes team can afford to lend significant resources to the America's Cup campaign is thanks to Formula One's new budget cap this year. The introduction of a $145 million spending cap in 2021 forced the team to make cuts in its design and engineering departments, but by shifting staff to a non-F1 project outside the cap they can continue to work for the team.

"From a cost cap point of view, this team was bigger last year than you could afford in a cost cap this year and that means a certain amount of our resources is able to work on this type of project," Allison said. "As the rhythm of the Cup campaign requires it, hopefully it will intermesh adequately well with the corresponding demands that happen over in F1 land, so all the skill that we have here can be brought to bear."

Mercedes Applied Science also works on other projects, including the design and optimisation of road bikes, running shoes and Ineos' off-road vehicle the Grenadier. Wolff said the decision to diversify the business away from F1 came from looking at the success of sports franchises in the U.S.A..

"We looked at this pretty early because I'm always keen to learn from other sports leagues and when you look over the ocean at the most developed American sports leagues - the NBA and the NFL - these guys have diversified into real estate and into the hospitality business by the sheer fact that they are having a stadium," Wolff said. "And I think for us the logical next step is diversifying into engineering. We have created all this I.P. that we have never deployed on any other vehicle other than a racing car.

"We have never monetised any of the I.P. that exists here, and you are talking billions of spend into technology in a Formula One team, so that's why it sounds pretty logical that other teams are also looking at that space.

"But Mercedes Applied Science is not a commercial engineering entity. We are not pitching actively for engineering jobs, but we want to work with people who want to break records or win championships in land, sea, air and space. We have seen how the most challenging of all racing, the pinnacle comparable to Formula One, and this is not in the pursuit of margin, but more in the pursuit of learning and diversification for the benefit of Formula One.

"In the same way, a great new project for engineers that have learned their laurels in Formula One but they want to look at something different. Having said that, it needs to stand on its own commercial legs.

"It's our way of diversifying into other business areas, but we need to make sure that we are a contributing partner with the same ambition that we have in Formula One racing but without distracting from any of the two activities: they must run in parallel.

"We don't want to read the headline in three years that since we have started sailing we haven't been winning on the road. That must not happen."

How will Mercedes F1 technology make a yacht go faster?

While Allison will be the technical lead on Ineos Britannia's America's Cup campaign, German naval designer Martin Fischer will lead the design concept. As tempting as it is to imagine shapes from Lewis Hamilton's F1 car emerging on a racing yacht, the reality is that Mercedes' engineering know-how will more likely contribute to parts of the boat you can't see.

"Areas which are harder for America's Cup teams to do but are the meat and drink of an F1 team are all the systems that we have in place to know, for example, that if you want to put a hydraulic pipe down a certain length of something, how far away to keep all the other things so it doesn't fret on the pipe and how often down the pipe do you need to support it so it doesn't bounce around so much and the type of equipment that we have to inspect stuff so that we know that what is designed is what we built and are assembling," Allison said.

"All of the design standards that have been painfully learnt and written into a procedure in an F1 team can now be picked up and used by the community of engineers that is Britannia. That sort of stuff is pretty valuable.

"When you want all your good hydrodynamic and aerodynamic ideas to come true - i.e. the things that are coming from the marine folk of the team, backed up by the capable bodies that are working with them - then the boat has to be assembled on time and to the right qualities, it must not break down on the water so the sailors can learn while they are sailing it, so I think the maturity of the Mercedes Formula One team provides a really functional environment for the design engineers to then create designs that ought to be reliable and work.

"Hopefully we then build enough raw performance in to the boat to make it a competitive boat as well as reliable boat."

Allison added: "We hope we properly understand that being good at racing cars doesn't mean you are good at making yachts. What we wish to do is to learn from people that are good at doing yachts the manner in which we can best help.

"So my opening conversations with Martin were to try and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the previous campaign inside Ben's team, the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign Martin was involved with in with Luna Rossa [the runner up at the 36th America's Cup], to try to figure out how we can amplify the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses.

"And to see where there are areas of opportunity, like the engineering standards that we have is stuff that any engineering group can happily pick up and fall on like manna from heaven to just say that's work we don't need to do, can we just use that?

"To specifically try to get the likely key features, because we don't know a location or the timing yet, but what are the likely key features and what sort of level of force are we going need."

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Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton & George Russell take flight in Barcelona with Ainslie's INEOS Britannia

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The making of F1’s best team boss – Toto Wolff interview

Toto Wolff has turned a lot to gold. His double life as one of (if not the) greatest Formula 1 leaders in history, overseeing Mercedes’ seven consecutive championship doubles, alongside a career as an ultra-successful businessman, is a world away from the one he grew up with in Vienna.

There was no indication amid the modest means and the family tragedy which would help shape Wolff into the passionate, protective and determined individual we know as the head of the Mercedes juggernaut, that he would become a man with a golden touch. Although he was, briefly, a man with a golden face and cape.

“The story is absolutely true, just it is one of the more embarrassing [ones]” :: Toto Wolff

“Where did you find that?!” Wolff laughs. The Race explains stumbling upon the little-known story about a brief side-job raising money for his Formula Ford endeavours as a young wannabe racer. Wolff had to be dressed in full golden garb, with his face painted to match.

“The story is absolutely true, just it is one of the more embarrassing,” Wolff smiles. “I was an aspiring racing driver, and really tried to make money to race wherever I could.

“So there was this electronics shop in Austria, it still exists, that has about 100 retail places. It was an hour’s drive from Vienna. And it was before Christmas. I went there alone. And I had to wear a golden cape, which went all the way to the floor. It wasn’t only a cape, it was like a ball gown with the cape. And there was, I think, some kind of stick.

“I was handing out vouchers for this electronic shop. I was standing right in the middle of the city centre, a kind of marketplace, handing out these vouchers, and it was so embarrassing with the costume. I was hoping that there wouldn’t be anybody that I would know.”

Forced to find his own ways to fund his racing, Wolff was (unknowingly) training himself for a career in business and, latterly, the business of motorsport itself. He also quickly learned the benefits of delegating.

“I decided for the second trip that I would take a friend of mine and he would wear the cape. And I would be standing next to him. I was paying him 50% of the fee I got. But I didn’t need to do this embarrassing thing.”

The “ridiculous” fundraising scene was a “funny episode of growing up” at the beginning of a journey that led him to a special place in F1’s history books. But, he says, “some are more distressing”.

TRAUMA AND TRIBALISM

Wolff’s father was a business owner from Romania and his mother an anaesthetist from Poland. The language of their house in Vienna was Polish. It was a modest upbringing in which two details stand out.

The first is that, despite the absence of lavish means, Toto’s mother facilitated his enrolment in a French private school in the city (Lycee Français de Vienne).

The second is Toto’s father was diagnosed with brain cancer when Toto was only eight years old. By the time the young Wolff decided a decade or so later that he wanted to be a racing driver, his father had passed away.

“As a husband, as a father, as a business owner, as a friend, I just like to avoid anybody around me having the same experience that I had” :: Toto Wolff

Wolff believes that embarrassment and pain “can be a driver to compensate for what you didn’t have in your childhood”. It is not necessary for someone to go through difficult moments to be successful, he adds, because people can be driven by other factors. But he says that trying to “compensate for something” you didn’t have is “always something that makes you thrive”.

“There’s various grades of trauma,” he says. “I’m not speaking about trauma that is caused by abuse or war. But losing a parent is trauma. And everything that’s linked to it, because it took a long time for this to happen.

“That follows me every single day. Because as a husband, as a father, as a business owner, as a friend, I just like to avoid anybody around me having the same experience that I had.”

Wolff works keenly to prevent those he is responsible for feeling exposed, unheard, uncared for.

He sees a link between his early experiences and the famous no-blame culture that has played such a huge part in Mercedes’ success. There is a huge emphasis on taking responsibility at Mercedes without apportioning blame. It allows the team to identify weaknesses without throwing people under the bus.

“It is my responsibility to look after everybody in this organisation, and my family,” says Wolff. “That’s maybe also because I had to take responsibility at a very early age for my sister and I.

“What it triggers in me is an instinct of ‘this is my tribe, and I need to protect my tribe, no matter what’. It triggers an emotional response in me. It’s not even something that I’m doing on purpose. I can analyse rationally what I’m doing. But I don’t know, it just comes out.

“This is the most important part. I won’t let anybody hit out on anybody within the tribe.”

One example came in the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, after Lewis Hamilton’s headrest came loose and he lost victory.

“I had an interview, somebody asked me to say who was responsible for the headrest coming off, and to name the person,” remembers Wolff. “It just sent me sky-high.

“It’s my responsibility to protect the group. It’s protecting every individual to the best of my abilities within the tribe.”

THE ABORTED DRIVING CAREER

If Wolff’s childhood sent him on a permanent quest for compensation, his adolescence steered him in a particular direction.

Wolff’s job in F1 combines two areas that have dominated parts of his life: racing and business. But as a rugby-playing schoolboy in Austria, “there wasn’t really anything that stood out”.

He liked sport but admits to being no great sportsman, joking that to win school titles and even play Austrian rugby internationally is like “Caribbean skiing”.

“My team boss Walter Lechner let me drive for the first hours and didn’t speak to me at all. And for the remaining five hours he gave me a huge bollocking” :: Toto Wolff

A chance trip to the Nurburgring fuelled his first real fire: watching on Saturday, dining at a local restaurant and seeing the drivers – including Wolff’s good friend Philipp Peter, who’d go on to become a works Audi driver – in the same place, and returning for the race the following day.

“We were on the grid, and it is something that really hit me,” he says. “It was love at first sight. And then it was clear for me I’d like to become a racing driver.”

A few years later, Wolff would abandon the dream almost as abruptly as he embraced it. In between, with “zero money in the family” and a “pretty grim” outlook, he progressed from racing a converted SEAT Ibiza (which he bought by selling his road car) and instructing at Walter Lechner’s driving school at what is now the Red Bull Ring, and found ways to raise sponsorship.

From there, Wolff had a “real go at it”. He spent 1992 (“a miserable season”), 1993 (“an OK season”) and 1994 (“a very good start”) racing in Formula Ford.

But by the end of his first season, Wolff says he knew he probably wasn’t going to make it. At least to F1. Following compatriot Alex Wurz (pictured below when he reached F1 with Benetton in 1997) on-track made Wolff realise that Wurz could do things Wolff couldn’t.

“It was clear he has a different ability to me,” says Wolff. “There was a gap. But it was tiny, it was not a lot.”

Wolff continued to race, primarily because he enjoyed it too much to stop. But in 1994, perversely at his most competitive, he was finally minded to do exactly that.

He remembers starting from pole in the German Formula Ford opener, overheating his Zetec engine at the start and running with a power deficit in the opening laps. Then defending so hard he ended up in the gravel and failed to finish.

“On the way back home, my team boss Walter Lechner let me drive for the first hours and didn’t speak to me at all,” says Wolff. “And for the remaining five hours he gave me a huge bollocking about how stupid I was because my main competitors were actually disqualified for technical infringement afterwards.

“So I could have, if not won because my engine was down on power, finished on the podium and created a sensible gap in the championship.

“He was brutal and direct, he was angry about the race. He said, ‘You’re a decent driver. And you can make a living out of this. But I think you should go back to economics and do more about your career than a racing driver’.”

This was the second strike after the initial realisation against Wurz. The third would come not long after, in May 1994, as a mutual sponsor struggled to deal with the aftermath of Karl Wendlinger’s awful injuries sustained in his Monaco Grand Prix.

“My main sponsor said ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’ve sponsored Karl and you, you’re the only ones, and I’ve been weeks now in the hospital seeing Karl in a coma. I don’t want to do this anymore, because I wouldn’t want to see that happening to you’.

“And he said, ‘so by the end of the year we’ll just stop all kinds of motorsport sponsoring’. All these singular experiences, put together – the gap in driving, Walter’s feedback and my sponsor saying ‘I can’t do this anymore’. I remember we sat in a bar in Vienna at lunchtime, and I said to him, then let’s stop right now.”

Wolff describes it as an instinctive decision. It was not the only one. He also decided to leave the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

“I wanted to earn my own money, not be dependent on anybody anymore. And then my business life started.”

‘SOME HAVE LOST MY RESPECT FOREVER’

Wolff’s life-altering decisions took him down a path that included an investment internship in Warsaw, a role in the sales management team at a steel company, and a San Francisco sojourn that opened his eyes to the potential of tech start-ups: insight he then used to excellent effect back in Europe.

But he’d roll his eyes if you used a cliched description like ‘entrepreneur’ to describe initiatives like his Marchfifteen and Marchsixteen companies (which, after the focus on internet and technology companies in its infancy, would even take him into the DTM – pictured below – via an investment into Mercedes’ partner HWA).

And it would do him a disservice. Not just because it puts his career in a pigeon hole, but because it overlooks the personal qualities that make Wolff a fascinating case study.

Psychology-minded and emotionally-invested, Wolff is no arrogant businessman caricature. Yes, he likes making money. He’s focused on making money. He’s good at making money and furthering his own interests. But it’s not just ones and zeros.

“If somebody disrespects integrity when dealing with me, I will break with this person, no matter what” :: Toto Wolff

Wolff’s ability to see the value of people is at the cornerstone of his success as a businessman and in turn is why someone from outside the F1 bubble could be plugged in, first at Williams then at Mercedes, and thrive.

It’s evident that inherently human qualities – namely integrity and compassion – are hugely important factors in how Wolff operates.

“Integrity in a world where everything is transparent means you’re staying true to your own values,” he says. “And we don’t deal in lies here, to repeat a very famous sentence of Kipling’s poem.

“There’s just no millimetre of margin for a lack of integrity. And it’s so important to me that if somebody disrespects integrity when dealing with me, I will break with this person, no matter what.”

A mark of this is in how Wolff views others, rather than how he treats his team (which we’ll come to later). Wolff is normally such a calm and measured presence in front of the media. But there have been recent occasions – mainly Ferrari-related questions since the late-2019 engine controversy, when Ferrari was widely suspected (though never proven by the FIA) to be circumventing fuel-flow rules – where spikes of emotion were evident in Toto’s body language and even his answers.

Is dishonesty in F1 something he takes as a personal offence?

“It is,” Wolff says. “Because I’m passionate about the sport and the values of the sport. It’s a competition that should be carried out on fair grounds.

“And there are some that have lost my respect forever over the last few years, not [from] a particular incident. And others that I see through their manipulative, amateur Machiavellian behaviour.

“I see the smiles that have hatred or negativity towards us. And then there’s people within the industry that I respect a lot, and I have friendships with them. They try to do the best for the sport, whilst maintaining a neutral position to all teams.

“They don’t ask anybody to be biased to Mercedes, just to do the best for the sport because we all benefit from a good sport. We share the revenues and the better the show is the better the sport.

“That’s why, in a way, I take it personally because I want to protect the organisation. But on the other side, the case studies of individuals that are around the paddock, it’s just very interesting for me to see that.

“They speak about Formula 1 as a shark tank. Most of them are goldfishes that believe they are sharks. And there’s some baby sharks also.”

PLAYING POLITICS

Wolff’s critics may seek to poke holes in his own integrity: times he has used Mercedes’ influence to strengthen its position, or has shifted stance after intervention from his Daimler boss Ola Kallenius. Anything that might be turned into a moment of Wolff acting selfishly or without conviction.

Either view oversimplifies the nature of F1’s political minefield. Though it’s true Wolff is willing to get his elbows out around the negotiating table. He and Mercedes have a lot of weight and it would be foolish not to throw that around when necessary.

For example, the reversed-grid proposal that Mercedes blocked last year, and would have hit the world champion team hardest, was rejected by Wolff.

He was also vociferously against suggestions that some kind of so-called convergence system would be necessary to equalise engine performance in order to facilitate a development freeze, which had been requested by Red Bull so it could take over Honda’s engines from 2022.

Wolff had zero time for that suggestion – especially as it came from Ferrari – and called it what it was: balance of performance. As someone whose racing hiatus was ended by competition in GTs, and whose first real racing business investments came in the DTM, Wolff knows that murky world well.

“I would have voted against balance of performance and reverse grids even if I were running Williams,” Wolff insists.

“I don’t want to have any gift. I think this should be a fair competition, may the best man win. It’s always been the best man and best machine, and everything else is just a dilution of the sport and the values of the sport.

“Yes, we are creating entertainment. That’s what it is. But the entertainment is there because our spectators know that this is a real competition out there. Not manipulated towards more variability. And I believe that we need to stay true to these values.”

It may seem convenient that his personal opinion also happens to be the position that suits Mercedes’ best competitively. For what it’s worth, it seems a sincerely-held view. But even if it was simply the party line, who would expect otherwise?

Wolff’s not always in the right. He cries foul when he feels he or his team is being wronged, has to engage selfishly in F1’s politics at times, has to be an ‘operator’ like so many others. He wouldn’t have assumed the executive director role at Williams, or become a Mercedes managing partner, without savviness.

“Then there are clear, obvious actions against the team with the only aim to hurt us. And I will be always fighting this” :: Toto Wolff

But there is a strong sense that Wolff will not play games for nothing. Sometimes it is necessary. Especially when trying to defend his ‘tribe’.

Under Wolff’s leadership, Mercedes has endured a few rule changes some – including Hamilton – would say are the legacy of parties pushing anti-Mercedes agendas, with the express intent of toppling Mercedes from its perch.

Last year’s ban on qualifying engine modes was one. The reduction of rear downforce for 2021 – done in the name of safety – was another, seemingly stripping away less performance on higher-rake cars, with Mercedes being one of only two teams employing a low-rake philosophy.

“There are areas where I see bias against Mercedes,” Wolff says. “And here in the group we discuss, is it a pure bias that somebody wants to just penalise us in a way which sometimes is triggered by other teams, or is this something that is really important for the sport?

“We have even accepted some of the biases, because we knew about them. We took the conscious decision to accept it. But then there are clear, obvious actions against the team with the only aim to hurt us. And I will be always fighting this.”

If Wolff is just another team boss, a hypocrite, and a bit of a bastard behind the scenes, then he hides it well in public. Testimony from respected paddock figures, who have experience across several teams, would suggest that’s not what’s happening.

Though he says he gets “way too much credit” for Mercedes’ renowned culture, there is no doubt he is responsible for its enduring success. Technical director James Allison has said that imposing a culture is only possible if it is lived in every moment by those at the top – starting with Toto – and that one slip-up will undo hundreds of good moments.

“Our brainstorming, it’s actually an overwhelming intellectual waterfall that happens when we are together” :: Toto Wolff

This is where most people in leadership tend to fail, but Wolff buys into the culture entirely. Once, he joked that the media were probably sick of hearing about his “tree-hugging” mentality. But it’s much more than that. Wolff calls it “the immune system of our organisation”.

“We’ve spent a lot of time since I joined in 2013 to think about it and think about our values, about our objectives,” he says. “And about empowerment responsibility, accountability is very important – that you measure your own accountability. And it’s just a fantastic group of people. And we jointly have had our inputs in creating this mindset and culture.”

One such example was the motto ‘see it, say it, fix it’, constructed in collaboration with New Zealand rugby team sport psychologist Dr Ceri Evans. The idea started life in the operations part of the business, designed to eliminate faults identified in the process.

“The feedback we got that sometimes people didn’t dare to speak up, didn’t have the open ear of their direct bosses for the improvement of process that they were suggesting or for a fault fix,” says Wolff.

“We tried to eliminate hierarchy in this process. That has actually done us very well in terms of reliability – knock on wood, we were among the best teams in the past few years, but it’s never down to one change in processes. There’s so many factors that influence it.

“And by the way, it wasn’t tree-hugging exercises, but we laughed about it. Our brainstorming, it’s actually an overwhelming intellectual waterfall that happens when we are together, and I learn so much from everybody that it’s pure enjoyment.

“I think this is the power of the organisation. There is not one Jesus that you draft in. And this is the big misconception in Formula 1 that decision-makers that own teams or run teams or OEMs, they think ‘I need to hire the best team principal’ or ‘I need to hire the best technical director or the best head of aero’.

“That’s not going to change anything. One person or two people are not going to change anything. You need to have an organisation that as a whole plays well on the various areas of competence.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking that might be slightly hypocritical for a works team that started its most recent stint in F1 by appointing several big names to senior positions.

That was part of Ross Brawn’s wider vision for the organisation, appointing experienced and successful people into specific roles that formed a bigger structure. Shared responsibility, maximum collaboration.

It took a long time to get to work properly and it started to bear fruit before Wolff arrived. So he can’t – and doesn’t – take credit for that. But he has been instrumental in putting the full scope of Brawn’s vision into practice.

Mercedes has been blessed with serious financial firepower, but has consistently outperformed two rivals (Ferrari and Red Bull) with similar means.

“One analogy that I particularly like, I don’t know who came up with it, is we’re not a group of five-year-old kids playing football that run behind the ball bunched up,” says Wolff.

“We are letting the ball run like in rugby. Because we all hold position. We play in the position we can contribute, the best to the team. And that is why we are so strong.”

HIS 2020 CROSSROADS

Wolff signed a new three-year deal late last year as well as slightly increasing his shareholding to one-third, alongside Daimler and incoming part-owner INEOS.

It brought an end to a long-running contract saga that almost rivalled star driver Hamilton’s career uncertainty.

Previously, in his business ventures, Wolff was minded to invest quickly and smartly, make his money, and move on to the next opportunity. His personal interest in motorsport meant that anything he did in racing was always likely to be different.

It was that way in the DTM, and it was that way with Williams (pictured above) before the rare opportunity at Mercedes – including a shareholding – arose.

The Mercedes job changed something for Wolff. There was still a roughly defined end point. And in 2020 he reached a crossroads.

“I’m still at heart a financial investor,” says Wolff. “I like the variety of people that you deal with and the variety of business cases that are interesting to develop.

“Formula 1 was more like a project, and the plan was that by the end of 2020 I would sell my shares, sell the shares back to Daimler or to a third party and conclude my activity. And I spent a year thinking about it.

“Then came the shift in the autumn. I thought, ‘I want this’” :: Toto Wolff

“I decided that I love the connection to the people. I enjoy developing the organisation further, staying successful in Formula 1, not taking anything for granted and having any kind of self-entitlement, building our engineering arm Mercedes Benz Applied Science, and in an environment where the cost cap has caused us much pain to downsize, utilise the opportunity to make this a financially successful organisation, like the American sports teams have shown us when they introduced the salary caps.

“And over a year I came to the conclusion that this is what I want to do. I decided that I’m not going to sell out.”

One could compartmentalise Wolff’s change of heart into three elements. He loved the dynamic challenge at Mercedes, particularly with the cost cap era beginning and the landscape shifting so substantially. Of all the various alternatives he might have, none were better – especially once very tentative discussions about the F1 top job amounted to nothing.

And Wolff saw the opportunity for a very good business deal in the form of that revised Mercedes ownership structure, with Daimler reducing its share, Wolff increasing his and INEOS owner Jim Ratcliffe coming aboard.

Within all that, Wolff remains “the master of my own destiny”. He can pick and choose his role.

At one stage last year he suggested he would move into an ‘upstairs’ role and find a replacement as team principal – but now, he says, the challenge to “identify somebody that can do my job and the variety of my roles better than I, hand over the baton to this person, and support, mentor, and maybe have another role” is only a hypothetical consideration.

The narrative of whether Wolff would stay at Mercedes last year, and if he did then in which position, seemed to shift around the autumn. Previously he had made it clear he didn’t know if he’d be staying, then his rhetoric switched to an insistence he would be leading the team in 2021 and beyond, the details just had to be defined.

“You’re spot on,” says Wolff. “You kind of got the moment where I took the decision. And it was non-committal [before] because I didn’t know. I didn’t know whether I wanted to continue or not, and then came the shift in the autumn.

“I thought, ‘I want this’. But it was so many hours thinking about it.”

It’s impossible not to wonder how much Wolff will have achieved when he does finally “sell out”.

With seven titles in the bank it’s entirely possible that his greatest successes in F1 are behind him and that Mercedes’ time on top is coming to an end.

Though the team’s come-from-behind win against a superior Red Bull in the 2021 opener would suggest that this giant will not be going down without a fight, and judging by Wolff’s jubilant reaction the fire still burns bright.

Even if that win proved to be Mercedes’s last, Wolff’s place in team and F1 history would be preserved forever. He didn’t start the Mercedes juggernaut but as his predecessor Brawn once told him, he assumed control of it superbly.

He put a favoured business tactic – bet on something and help make it better – to use with unprecedented success.

Wolff doesn’t drop the balls he picks up, he runs with them. His experiences, good and bad, have all counted for something and shaped him into a fascinating, multi-dimensional, prosperous person. What we see on any given F1 weekend – a soundbite, a fist slammed on the table, an arm aloft with joy – is the sum of all of that.

The appeal of a good origin story is fleshing out the character’s background and discovering their journey to who they became. It’s learning what the superhero went through before he got his cape.

Tragedy and triumph is usually a hallmark of such tales. Wolff’s is the same, minus the superhero part. Although he did briefly have the cape.

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• Nationality : Austrian
• Date of Birth : 12 January 1972
• Place of Birth : Vienna, Austria
• Lives : Monaco
• 8 Formula One Constructors' Championships
• 7 Drivers' Championships
• 2013 Formula One Joined Mercedes

Toto Wolff is Team Principal & CEO of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. He is the managing partner of the team alongside wider responsibilities as Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport. 

From humble surroundings in Vienna, Austria, Toto’s first taste of motorsport came when at 17, whilst watching a friend race at the Nürburgring. A short racing career of his own followed, competing in Austrian Formula Ford and scoring a class win at the 1994 Nürburgring 24 Hours. 

Toto called time on his racing career just three years later, transferred his competitive ambitions to the business and investment world. After studying at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Toto founded his own investment company, Marchfifteen, in 1998, followed by Marchsixteen in 2004. 

Initially focusing on internet and technology companies in the ‘tech boom’ era of the 90s, the business developed strategic investments in medium-size industrial companies and listed companies. 

One of these investments included the initial public offering of HWA AG - the company responsible for developing and racing Mercedes-Benz cars for the DTM (German Touring Car Championship), as well as Mercedes-Benz’s successful Formula 3 engine programme. Toto divested his stake in HWA AG in 2015. 

In 2002, Toto started a new venture, co-owning a racing driver management company alongside two-time Formula One World Champion Mika Häkkinen. The same year, Toto returned to racing, winning once on the way to sixth in the FIA GT World Championship. Further success followed in 2006, when Toto claimed top overall honours at the 24 Hours of Bahrain. 

In November 2009, Toto merged his passion for racing and investment by investing in the Williams F1 Team. By July 2012, Toto was Executive Director of the team, playing a key leadership role as Williams scored its first win in eight years at the Spanish Grand Prix that season. 

Less than a year later, after being asked to analyse their Formula One performance by the Daimler AG Board, Toto was appointed Managing Partner of the Mercedes F1 Team and acquired a 30% stake in the Brackley-based team alongside co-shareholder Niki Lauda. At the same time, he assumed the role of Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, with overall responsibility for the company’s works motorsport programmes.  

At the end of the 2020 F1 season, it was announced that Toto had increased his stake in the team, with Toto, INEOS and Daimler AG all holding one-third equal shareholding. Under the new structure, it was confirmed Toto will remain in his role as Team Principal and CEO for a further three years. 

An entrepreneur, an investor and a racer, motorsport runs in Toto Wolff’s blood. Under his leadership, the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team has clinched eight consecutive Formula One Constructors’ Championships (2014-2021) and seven consecutive Drivers’ Championships (2014-2020). 

September 29, 2022

Business jets and services

Bombardier Introduces Innovator, Investor and F1 Team Owner Toto Wolff as Worldwide Brand Ambassador

Bombardier today introduced Toto Wolff as its worldwide brand ambassador. For many years, Toto has turned to Bombardier jets to quickly, efficiently and smoothly travel between business and motorsport engagements around the world. With this longstanding experience in hand, Toto will support Bombardier through a range of activities and touchpoints.  

"Toto is a visionary leader and entrepreneur who embodies the spirit of innovation, excellence, performance and competitiveness that have all become synonymous with Bombardier business jets around the world,” said Éric Martel, President and CEO, Bombardier. “We are particularly proud that Toto’s discerning eye and quality-driven mindset have led him to deepen his ties with Bombardier through this agreement. We look forward to showcasing our capabilities and continuing to promote the Bombardier brand around the world.”

“As a full-range Bombardier customer for over 15 years starting with the Learjet and Challenger Series through to the Global 6000 , I appreciate and admire the exceptional level of quality and ceaseless innovation Bombardier stands for,” said Toto Wolff. “Bombardier shares my drive for high-performance, often facilitating it, and I’m looking forward to drawing on my experiences as I represent this fantastic brand around the world”.

Toto will support Challenger and Global business jet products—including the latest, sustainably designed, Challenger 3500 super midsize jet, and the performance leading Global 8000 flagship aircraft—as well as innovative initiatives, such as the recently unveiled Bombardier’s EcoJet Research Project. Toto will also serve to highlight Bombardier’s expanding worldwide service center network, which recently celebrated significant growth milestones in Singapore and Melbourne, Australia, and is poised for further inaugurations this year alone in London, UK and Miami, Florida. More specifically, Toto will focus ambassadorial duties around the service network’s turnkey refresh, refurbishment and upgrade offerings that are now available in more geographies, following facility openings and enhancements. 

About Toto Wolff

Toto Wolff is Team Principal, CEO & co-owner of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team. A former racing driver turned investor, Toto started his career by founding a tech-focused venture capital firm in Austria. He entered F1 with an ownership stake in the Williams F1 Team in 2009, before acquiring a 30% stake in the Mercedes-Benz works team in 2013. Toto has led the team, featuring the most successful F1 driver of all-time, Lewis Hamilton, to unprecedented heights, becoming the most successful sports team in the world based on consecutive world championships.

About Bombardier

Bombardier is a global leader in aviation, focused on designing, manufacturing, and servicing the world's most exceptional business jets. Bombardier’s Challenger and Global aircraft families are renowned for their cutting-edge innovation, cabin design, performance, and reliability. Bombardier has a worldwide fleet of approximately 5,000 aircraft in service with a wide variety of multinational corporations, charter and fractional ownership providers, governments, and private individuals. Bombardier aircraft are also trusted around the world in special-mission roles.

Headquartered in Montréal, Québec, Bombardier operates aerostructure, assembly and completion facilities in Canada, the United States and Mexico. The company’s robust customer support network includes facilities in strategic locations in the United States and Canada, as well as in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, the UAE, Singapore, China, and an Australian facility opening in 2022.

For corporate news and information, including Bombardier’s Environmental, Social and Governance report, visit bombardier.com. Learn more about Bombardier’s industry-leading products and customer service network at businessaircraft.bombardier.com. Follow us on Twitter @Bombardier.

Bombardier, Learjet, Challenger, Global and Global 8000 are registered or unregistered trademarks of Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries.