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Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has opened up about his relationship with his parents, and the tragedy he endured in his younger years.
In an interview on Mercedes F1 Team’s official website, team boss Toto Wolff opened up about the difficulties he faced in his younger years, especially after his father passed away.
“My Dad had a transport company,” Wolff said.
“He was successful at a young age, but then he lost all of it. He had brain cancer when I was eight.
“It started benign and got worse to the point it was uncurable. It was struggle for him because he was operated on so much that it changed his personality.
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“And when a son is in his teenage years, you need your Dad – to love, to look up to, to hate, to fight. There is a terrible guilt.”
Toto said in his early career he was fuelled by anger directed at people he perceived have let his father down during his illness.
“In the early years of my professional life, I was driven by anger, for all the people who let my Dad down.
“At the beginning I wanted to show them. There was a list of actual people who didn’t respect my father.
“When my Dad got ill, I took so much responsibility on for my sister – it made me want to be an adult.”
Toto then turned toward his complicated relationship with his mother.
“My mother came to Vienna when she was 18, speaking no word of German and studied medicine, and became a doctor. She was an anaesthesiologist.
“She is now 79, she is not well, and she says to me that she is not a good mother. And I tell her that I forgive her, because I know how difficult it is to be at home and see the suffering.
“But at the end she is responsible for who I am today. If you asked me now if I would rather be who I am today or a white elephant, I would rather be who I am today,” Wolff concluded.
