© Sebastian Kawka for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
With several key figures leaving the FIA recently, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says: “You have to ask yourself why so many have left and have done so now?”
The story of the FIA’s investigation into Toto and Susie Wolff’s alleged conflict of interest has garnered much attention last month.
Surisingly, only two days after the investigation was made public, the FIA suddenly announced they are dropping it. It remains unclear what prompted the FIA to start the investigation in the first place.
Many observers and insiders believe the whole situation was started because of a personal grudge between Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem.
This has been going on amid a significant exodus of several of the FIA’s key figures tasked with governing Formula 1.
Now, in a talk with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Toto has implied that the exodus is a sign of a larger issue within the organization.
“I think the FIA has many important tasks as an institution, the first of which is to govern with ethics, transparency and integrity,” the Austrian said.
“This includes how you run the sport together with F1 and the teams, but also how the rules are set and controlled.
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“In the end, we all have to share the same goal: to make F1 even bigger in the world. For that to happen you need stability.
“It is not a good thing when people of experience and quality leave. [Former FIA Sporting Director of Formula 1] Steve Nielsen, who knows the sport from every angle, left, and that’s a bad blow.
“Then [Former FIA Single-Seater Technical Director] Tim Goss left, and in this way, [FIA Single Seater Director] Nicolas Tombazis loses a very good lieutenant. And still others have resigned.
“As teams, we cannot do anything about it: it is not up to us to decide how people manage their staff and their structure.
“But when all of a sudden such good people leave an organisation you create a vacuum, it’s clear.
“You have to ask yourself why so many have left and have done so now,” Wolff concluded.
