© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, Mercedes announced that team boss Toto Wolff would miss the race. However, now he explains why he decided to attend the race anyway.
Ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix, Mercedes announced that team boss Toto Wolff would not be attending the race.
This was not overly strange, as he announced ahead of the 2024 season that he would miss certain races, but amid Mercedes’ performance issues, it has made some fans speculate about his reasons.
Well, Toto is now in Japan, and he explains what made him change his plans.
“Yeah, I had planned not to come to Japan because there’s so much on back in Europe, things to do,” the Austrian said.
“But then I felt not coming to Japan was the wrong choice. I think it’s important to be with the race team, [and] also it does me good also to be close to the action.
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“We are experimenting with a few things and then being part of the team really gives me energy. I hope the other way around too. So that’s why I decided against staying in Europe.
“And the struggle [Mercedes is going through] that you’ve [journalist] mentioned, I think we’re a sports team, we’ve won eight times in a row and that hasn’t been done before. You have periods where you struggle like any other sports team and you can’t win every time.
“That’s why this is a super challenge. It’s not a race, it’s not one single season and then you come back out on top, but it’s the third one in a row.
“But I remain absolutely convinced that we will be looking back in a few years and saying that was so tough, but so important for the development of the team from maybe an organisational standpoint.
“From [a standpoint of] re-evaluating our tools and systems, which clearly don’t work as good as they did in previous regulations,” Wolff concluded.
