The Mercedes F1 pressure changes under 10 years of Toto Wolff

"Mercedes seems to be fumbling in the dark. It's not a question of a certain individual not being good enough, it's about whether the culture of the way a team operates is conducive to success."

So stated Autosport magazine in October 2012 – just a week after Lewis Hamilton had been announced as joining Mercedes and ending his long association with McLaren. In our 4 October issue that year, we were assessing the fallout from Hamilton’s decision to join the Silver Arrows squad and wondering what it might one day mean for the reputations of both driver and (then) upcoming new team.

As a Formula 1 world champion with a truly captivating story and exciting driving style to boot, Hamilton’s reputation was well established. Back in 2012, Mercedes’ standing in the modern era was not great.

It stood as an illustrious marque that had the resources, but couldn’t put them to use in achieving lasting F1 success – the team having achieved just one win since Mercedes had purchased the Brawn squad ahead of the 2010 campaign.

It hadn’t sustained the Brawn GP magic from 2009, with Red Bull forging ahead to become the championship’s premier squad of the subsequent mini-era. It could even be said to have a history of underachieving with heavy resources given the 2007-2008 Honda days had barely passed for the Brackley-based team.

Staff who worked through those three guises, such as current Mercedes director of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin, speak of “the belief” not being in the team that it could “ever get to a point where they’d win a championship”.

Even after the disastrous 2022 campaign just gone, that has well and truly changed. Now over 10 years on from Hamilton joining, Mercedes very much understands winning. The team’s culture has truly changed.

Wolff and Hamilton joined Mercedes in 2013 - beginning its upward trajectory in F1

Photo by: Sutton Images

One person credited with playing a huge part in the transformation is also celebrating a 10-year anniversary at Mercedes in 2023: the boss, Toto Wolff, who arrived in 2013 as a shareholder and executive director, plus heading Mercedes’ overall motorsport programmes having previously been a shareholder and executive director at Williams. Back then, Wolff (who only gave up his last Williams shares in 2016) was working alongside then team principal Ross Brawn and non-executive chairman Niki Lauda.

It would be wrong to state that Wolff alone is responsible for turning around Mercedes' fortunes. Indeed, the key decisions that led to its repositioning as F1's top team in 2014 were taken long before he joined – with the team’s work on nailing the V6 turbo hybrid rules and signing Hamilton having begun under Brawn.

But F1 history is littered with teams that had potential to succeed ultimately underachieving, or perhaps not making the most of their time in the sun. Mercedes has absolutely done that. And, on the eve of the 2023 campaign, its sole goal is to get back to basking at the front of the grid as a regular race winner and title contender.

"Toto is very focused as a leader to really elevate people. I don't know any other leader that that I've worked with that goes and says, 'hey, how’re things at home? How can I help support you better?'" Lewis Hamilton

When Hamilton signed up to join the Mercedes project, the pressure was on the team to deliver a winning car. Driver speed was no longer an issue after years of Mercedes not quite knowing where it stood on that front with Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher piloting the first F1 Silver Arrows since those driven (mainly) by Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss in 1955. Rosberg running Hamilton so close during their years as team-mates and indeed beating him to the 2016 title suggests both were operating at a very high level indeed.

But if Mercedes’ car performance swing to make good on its drivers’ promise can't be attributed to Wolff, what is the key element he brings that has ensured the targeted sustained success was achieved?

“I think it's leadership,” Hamilton said when Autosport asked him at last year’s US Grand Prix to pinpoint why it is only Mercedes that has tasted title glory alongside Red Bull in all those years after he left McLaren (in 2012 still capable of challenging for championships in a campaign Fernando Alonso nearly won in a Ferrari)

“We've got a great leader. We've got amazing support from the Daimler board who all like racing. Passionate racers. And then I think it's the core group of people. There’s great communication throughout the organisation.

Hamilton has lauded Wolff's leadership skills at Mercedes, and the two have formed a tremendous working relationship

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

“Toto is very focused as a leader to really elevate people. I don't know any other leader that that I've worked with at least that goes and says, ‘hey, how’re things at home? How can I help support you better, so you have more time with your wife or your husband or with your partner, with your kids, so that you come to work and be happier and want to commit more?’ That’s who Toto is.”

“Where we started the journey,” Wolff says,” the kind of prevailing philosophy was: ‘this is a race car, and the race car needs good aerodynamics, and a strong engine, and so on and so forth’. But it was almost always neglected that the racing team is a group of people that have joined on a journey.

“And these people have hopes, dreams, objectives, anxieties, all of that. And I think what we have been able to do in Mercedes is to embed a structure where it's all around the person, we care. And we believe when we care. And when we set up an organisation that demonstrates that every day, then you can achieve extraordinary performances.

“Now, that's no guarantee forever, as we've seen in 2022, but the culture and the values are the immune system of any organisation, and this is where it needs to start.”

In the years since its team culture was being openly questioned, Mercedes has fostered one where it's ok for mistakes to be made, so long as they’re owned, acted upon, and progressed from. This doesn’t mean it's constant happy clapping, as the behind-the-scenes arguments Hamilton and Shovlin have attested to in the aftermath of the 2022’s W13 being revealed initially as dud confirm.

But therein lies the story of the true worth of the culture change Wolff has instilled at Mercedes. The W13 ended up as a race winner with George Russell come 2022’s conclusion as Mercedes worked on diagnosing and then addressing its flaws, while the were no signs of real fracture in the Mercedes camp. That’s even as they processed being unable to deal with the pain of Abu Dhabi 2021 – that Wolff admits to regularly recalling – with instant restoration.

Of course, the whole ‘team culture’ element is overblown to a certain degree – it’s a nice PR soundbite. But it is rooted in reality. After all, across all of sport and indeed society, it can be said that dysfunctional organisations do dysfunctional things. Therefore, other parts of Wolff’s contribution to Mercedes’ success have been just as crucial to the tale.

"I'm in his head rent-free": Wolff and Red Bull boss Christian Horner have had a strong political rivalry

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

An essentially self-confessed workaholic, he’s involved in tiny details and decisions such as aspects of team kit, but wisely doesn’t insert himself into the technical elements so key to F1 success. As the team leader, he must make sure Mercedes has all the other key parts to make the best possible cars – ensuring there’s no financial or commercial strife and playing the politics game to its advantage.

He's even made that pretty entertaining over the years – telling The Times recently that "I am living in his head rent free", concerning Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, and embracing the upsides of Netflix after initially swerving ‘Drive to Survive’ – but it's ultimately a secondary element compared to ensuring Mercedes remains financially healthy.

As a co-owner, Wolff has even more reason to want this, with his background as a venture capitalist clearly a boost in this regard.

That acumen has led to running an F1 team with an entrepreneurial outlook – in Mercedes’ case aided by its ownership being split three ways between Wolff, also team CEO, petrochemical giant INEOS and the marque itself – now something of a model compared to the floundering manufacturer behemoths of the early 2000s.

This structure and its performance have in turn been enhanced by F1’s business boom under Liberty Media, and at the same time explains why teams are reluctant to open up to new entrants such as Andretti without what they view as satisfactory additional financial buffers being in place.

Things haven’t always gone smoothly for Mercedes during Wolff’s tenure, running as things stand until at least 2024 – the Barcelona crash between Hamilton and Rosberg being the nadir of that broken relationship. But Mercedes kept on winning, thanks to the engine performance advantages it had accrued and have since been eroded by the other manufacturers finally catching up.

Mercedes' difficult 2022 has tested the team's resolve - and Wolff has had to weather the storm

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

When F1 was said to be suffering by the team’s enduring success, it was hardly Mercedes' fault. But the team has taken decisions with F1’s interests in mind – such as not taking its Abu Dhabi protests further legally.

But it's intriguing to look at F1 overall in the context of all Wolff has achieved in 10 years at Mercedes. Hamilton, who these days conducts his contract negotiations very personally with Wolff, remains its ultimate star thanks to his wider-reaching fame compared to Max Verstappen, while Wolff has groomed a likely Hamilton successor in Russell. But his and Mercedes’ influence filter through the championship.

There are its customer engine squads Aston Martin, McLaren and Williams – the latter where former Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles has been hired as team principal. He departed on such good terms that Mercedes even organised the press conference explaining his signing.

"Where we started the journey, the kind of prevailing philosophy was: ‘this is a race car, and the race car needs good aerodynamics, and a strong engine, and so on and so forth’. But it was almost always neglected that the racing team is a group of people" Toto Wolff

Former Mercedes-contracted drivers Valtteri Bottas and Esteban Ocon remain on good terms at Alfa Romeo and Alpine. Wolff’s friend Fred Vasseur is now team boss at Ferrari, no doubt hoping to produce a similar culture and success turnaround tale.

Nyck de Vries joins F1 full-time this year with AlphaTauri having won a Formula E title for Mercedes – a story rather relevant to new Silver Arrows reserve driver Mick Schumacher, of whom Wolff said recently Mercedes has “definitely gained with Mick joining”.

De Vries’ tale actually shows how Wolff’s soft-power elsewhere in F1 doesn’t always successfully pay off, given Williams – then helmed by Jost Capito – opted to hire Red Bull-backed Alex Albon back in 2021.

Nyck de Vries' support from Wolff and Mercedes earned him an F1 opportunity in 2023

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

On Vowles' departure, the implication given he’d handed over his role in producing Mercedes’ race strategies to a team of nine other engineers and was working closely with Wolff, per the Austrian, “overlooking the situation like I have done for many years now” is that he was a potential successor as Mercedes team boss.

That actually remains the case in alongside his Williams move, but Wolff’s recent statements suggest he’s in no hurry to step aside, despite believing “I would not hesitate one single second about appointing someone to that area, or finding someone that could take over what I do” if he found that mindset changing.

With his 11th year at Mercedes in mind – the team has taken a low-key approach to celebrating the decade milestone just passed – Wolff says things are “at a realistic level” regarding the W14 revitalising its fortunes. It can certainly be said that Mercedes’ expectation-management game remains strong…

PLUS: The crucial tech changes F1 teams must adapt to in 2023

But now it has the success-baked resilience to operate in such a way, which it couldn’t in 2012.

Through all the time that has passed, the pressures have changed – from producing a car for Hamilton and co to win with, to maintaining its advantage through a major rule change (2017), to bouncing back from the Abu Dhabi shock and 2022’s disappointment.

But history proves Mercedes can now cope and indeed thrive with greater accomplishment in mind. The legacy of 10 years of Toto.

Can Wolff steer the Mercedes ship back to title contention?

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images