F1 Racing - UK (2020-01)

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52 F1 RACING JANUARY 2020

F1Racing:We want to explore the human element behindthe structure, the

organisation behind the machine. How did youbuild up, from the remnants

of Brawn GP, with Mercedes support, thiswinning machine over time?

Toto Wolff:In Formula 1 there is rarely a silver bullet, or one-time wonders.

Maybe apart from 2009. And even that had a backstory with a 2008

preparation and the 2008 budgets that weregiven – and a geniusengineer

back in Japan who found out about the double diffuser. But since then

it’s really been about understanding the organisation, understanding its

weaknesses and its strengths, developing the individuals – giving them a

framework that allows them to perform. Understand which resources you

need, which is something thatwas not done before.

F1R:What do you mean, precisely?

TW:You need to understand wherewithin your infrastructure, and within

your resources – financial resources, human resources, technical capability

• you’re lacking. And if you’re not brutally honest with yourself, and
  understand where the gaps are, you will never have an organisation that
  will be able to fight at the front in a sustainable way. This iswhat we did
  at the end of 2012. I only joined in January 2013, but in September 2012 I
  was given three months – without having decided yetwhether to join – by
  the board to give a personal opinion, without having a deep insight, of what
  I thought wasgoing wrong.

F1R:Did you find it an advantageto be looking at it dispassionately from the

outside, or a disadvantage in the sense you didn’t have the deep knowledge?

TW:I was at Williams, so I wasn’t really giventhe detail. Thestart of the

journey was tounders tand what the expectations of Daimler were with

their team, and theexpe ctationswere to win championships – on resource

that was about equal to what I had at Williams, and our expectation was

to come in fourth or fifth!

F1R:So you instantly had a reference, to say ‘OK, you need to upscale this’?

TW:I think there was a lack of expectation management, and a

dysfunctional understanding of what the objectivesof the t eam were. That’s

maybe due to historic context. When the team was bought, it was bought

under certain premises that the team could be run in a profitable way –

that the Resource Restriction Agreement would kick in and allow for that,

here is something intrinsically contradictory in what we’re doing, here in Toto Wolff’s private office on

the Sunday of the Japanese Grand Prix. Mercedes is about to clinch its sixth consecutive constructors’ world

championship, and does so a few hours after we’re donetalking. A couple of races later, Lewis Hamilton will

put theseal on his own deal – taking this team’s tally to anextraordinary and unprecedented six consecutive

F1 championship doubles, making it undefeated since 2014.

We want to talk to the figurehead of this mighty operation, to understandhis al chemy; to learn how he is

able to inspire so many hundreds of people to greatness, to be better than they were before, year after year

after year. But, as it is for allgrea t leaders, this is not really about him. Toto

simply sets the template, finds ways to unleash thepoten tial of his workforce

by understanding them and giving them the toolsthey need to succeed.

It sounds simple. But of course, this is far fromeasy. So many get swept

away in the cult of personality, believe their own hype and ultimately fail

because of it. Not Toto. As we’re about to learn, he workshard– to make this

less about him and more about inspiring his people to keep Mercedes on top of

Formula 1’s pile. His is a work many years in the making, and still unfinished.

Wolff hates talking about his own managerial

‘style’, preferringto fo cus on others

Although he had never run an organisation the size of Mercedes before

he joined theteam, Wolff quickly grasped what neededto be done