Toto Wolff has announced that he has not considered the possibility of stepping away from his team principal role at Mercedes after the team failed to record a single victory during the 2023 season. Instead, rivals Red Bull won 21 of the 22 races as Max Verstappen cruised to a third successive Drivers’ Championship crown.
The Silver Arrows dominated F1 after Wolff’s arrival in 2013, winning every single Constructors’ Championship title during the turbo-hybrid era with Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas helping to cement the team’s status as a behemoth of modern F1.
However, since Hamilton climbed onto the top step of the podium at the penultimate round of the 2021 season, Mercedes have experienced just a single race victory, which came when George Russell claimed his first-ever Grand Prix win following a commanding display at Interlagos in 2022.
“No, I don’t,” Wolff told RacingNews365 when asked whether or not he ever considers the possibility of stepping down from his role within the Mercedes management structure. “Because I still think that I can contribute to the team in my area of expertise.
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“And that is, I think, keeping it together, although I’m very emotional sometimes. But they know me so well, that I have these difficult moments on Sunday night. I can contribute.
“Unfortunately, I haven’t found someone where I would say: ‘I think that person has more energy, more drive, more skill and all of these factors that I believe are important to be a Team Principal’.”
While Mercedes still retained second place in the Constructors’ Championship in 2023, this season was much more testing than the 2022 campaign as both Hamilton and Russell struggled to extract consistent performance from the W14.
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Even more concerning was the lack of understanding that the team had of the car’s behaviour. This was best demonstrated at the Brazilian Grand Prix that rounded off the final triple-header of the season.
The Silver Arrows arrived at Interlagos – the site of their most recent Grand Prix win – expecting to take the fight to the likes of Red Bull and McLaren in the battle for victory. Instead, Mercedes endured their most uninspiring weekend of the season.
Hamilton crossed the line in P8 after fighting AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda during both the sprint race and the Grand Prix, while Russell was running on the fringes of the top ten after plummeting down the order, before being forced to retire with a mechanical issue.
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