© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff attended the Miami Grand Prix Friday Press Conference. Here is the full transcript.
Q: Toto coming to you, just taking up that point about Baku. Do you think the sport needs to avoid knee jerk reactions after a race like that?
Toto WOLFF: Well, first of all, I want to say a word about Franz. Because we are obviously both Austrians but Franz was always… so we have a past actually where we started racing was on the old Österreichring, both instructors in the same racing school – Walter Lechner Racing School – obviously Franz was there 45 years before me! But we actually missed each other just by a bit, by a few years. So, we’ve gone a long way and the career he has had. [To Franz Tost] are you the longest standing or are [to Christian Horner] you the longest standing team principal? [to Christian] Okay. So, you’re next in line to quit – would make life easier! No, that’s amazing, an amazing career. There is not many of us who have been there for quite some time,so congratulations for everything you’ve achieved.
Franz TOST: Thank you.
TW: Knee jerk reaction. Yeah, in this sport, we tend to be manic depressive, from exuberance to depression when things are going well, then it’s great, then we have a race that’s not so great and obviously then we talk about it. Many things have been taken out of context though, to create headlines. And I think we just need to see whether we have a pattern that continues: whether overtaking is more difficult or not? Are the 20 cars in a second? Is that the right thing to do to have or not? And are we creating too much downforce through the floor? All that for me hasn’t got the right answer. So, we need to find a baseline over the next few races, see whether there’s something which we can improve. Like Christian said, the 100m DRS could have made a big difference, we shall see.
Q: Talk to us about car performance. The W14 seems to have fluctuated, let’s say more, over the last few races. George on the front row in Melbourne, then knocked out in Q2 in Baku and then, as Christian’s just said, very quick at the end of FP1 here in Miami. How do you explain that to us?
TW: I think the car has some goodness, it’s just very tricky to unlock it from a setup point of view and also driving it. If the drivers have confidence, both of them, the car can go quick but it’s on a razor’s edge and when we are a little bit beyond it, then the car is really difficult. It’s unpredictable, it steps out under braking, understeers. I mean, it does the whole thing. And this morning, we seem to be in a sweet spot of the car, though. I don’t think that you can extrapolate from this result, we run later than everybody else. But at least it looks more encouraging than Baku.
Q: And this razor’s edge that you’ve just mentioned. Is that what Lewis meant yesterday when he said he wants a calmer car going forward?
TW: Yeah, I think a good car is a car that the drivers are able to push and feel that it doesn’t do anything unpredictable. And unfortunately, we’ve had that over the last year and this year, particularly in qualifying, where you really need to push the limits, that the drivers couldn’t find any confidence in the car.
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Q: On the subject of Lewis, he said yesterday he wants to continue in Formula 1. He’s going to be a free agent in seven months’ time. So what happens with the contract negotiations? When do you start?
TW: It’s been 11 years that I’ve that we’ve been together, and every single time when we talk about Lewis contract, it’s six months of ‘where are we and what is happening?’ And we keep seeing the same thing; that we’re just rolling on, it’s not any difficult contract negotiations, it’s just putting a different timeline and a few different numbers in there. And that’s what we do. And we’re, we’re working on this. It’s a work in progress, bouncing emails back and forth. And eventually we’re going to sign it.
Q: And you’re going to be a busy man, because Professor Wolff, you’ve been made an executive fellow at the Harvard Business School. So, a lot going on. Just what does that mean to you?
TW: Well, first of all, it makes my mother happy because I didn’t make her proud with my own academic career. So, my own academic inferiority complex that I’ve been carrying through my life is being smoothened a bit. But it’s quite interesting, because I started to work with the Oxford Business School, which was a sheer coincidence. We had an off-site there with our team and we got engaged with the professor, and that was really nice to teach. And then Harvard Professor Elberse decided to write a case study and from there on, I had two days in a class there as a guest lecturer and really enjoyed it – because it’s not only that I like talking, it’s an exchange. These are high calibre young professionals that know a lot and it goes both directions. So, spending a few days every few months in Boston takes my mind off from Formula 1, but at the same time, I feel that I have a lot of good ideas about Formula 1 there because of the exchange with clever, young people. So that is the reason I enjoyed it, and it’s 10-12 days a year. So it’s good.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Jon Noble – Motorsport.com) To Toto and Christian. When you’re in a situation, where the championship fight appears to be between your two drivers, how hard is it to maintain complete equality between them? Not to allow things like drivers running first on track in Qualifying; drivers getting the first pitstop, to give the impression of favouritism. What are the key challenges as well in maintaining that equality through the year?
TW: I can tell you from my past, it’s a super tricky job for Christian and the team, because both drivers will obviously try to always feel that they’re fairly and equally treated, whilst at the same time, trying to have an advantage. And I think in our team, it was important to maintain a lot of transparency and clarity, discuss things before we actually go racing on a Sunday. Put boundaries. And, at the end, both drivers, even with Nico and Lewis, respected the team’s opinion, whilst we acknowledge that they have a fight between the two of them. So going back in time, there’s things I probably would have done differently in 2016, particularly, but the balance right between accepting these two guys are racing for a championship, and it’s within the same garage. And at the same time, they are part of a larger structure. I think that is not always easy, because they are very competitive animals.
Christian HORNER: We just do everything Toto says but just a bit better. No, look, I think that it’s a luxury problem, first of all. Wow, I think any team principal in the pit lane would hope to have that issue. And it’s something we’ve experienced before. And I think the most key thing is, as Toto was mentioning, is to ensure that paranoia doesn’t creep in and that both drivers are treated equally. You go to pains to provide equality, to the point of who drives out the garage first each weekend, you know, it alternates. It even alternates in the debrief who talks first. But you know, it’s racing is Formula 1, and occasionally something will happen like a Safety Car or a pit stop and you can’t control every aspect within the sport. There are still variables. And I think so long as the drivers know that they’re both getting an equal chance and it’s ultimately down to what they do on the circuit, that’s where you want it to play out, not through reliability, for example, to play a key role in a championship fight between your two drivers within your own team.
Q: (Matt Kew – Autosport) A question to all three team principals on the subject of dull races. In other series, you had push to pass and reverse grids, and there still can be dull races. So the idea of Formula 1 being always entertaining is that an impossible utopia?
CH: I mean, a Formula 1 season is like, you know, like a long book that not every chapter can be a blockbuster and particularly with the amount of races that we have you get races that sometimes are a bit static, you get sometimes races that are phenomenal events and there’s no magic ingredient other than the variables that sometimes introduce that, you know. Weather can play a factor or tyre degradation for example, but inevitably, sometimes there will be races that are sometimes slightly less entertaining than others, as you see with football matches as you see in all kinds of other sports.
TW: Yeah, as Christian said, there’s nothing to add.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing News 365) It’s a year ago here that Michael Andretti announced that he was looking at joining the Formula 1 grid. Subsequently, we’ve had another two teams announcing their intentions. They all bring different angles to the game. Are you still anti more teams joining the Formula 1 grid from ‘25 or ‘26?
TW: First of all, we have no say in this. If we’re being asked… Our opinion is being asked. But we’re not part of the process of choosing a team or not. The opinion that we have expressed is that it’s very difficult in Formula 1 to perform. It has taken us many years to be where we are. We’ve gone through really difficult times where Formula 1 wasn’t the blockbuster it is today, and therefore whoever enters the sport, I think it would be beneficial for all of us if they can really bring something new to the show, if it can help us to increase our audiences or if there is lots of marketing dollars that are being invested, similar to what we have done over the years. Red Bull and Mercedes, sitting here, I mean, hundreds of millions. And if that were the case, I think we need to be all open-minded and say how can we contribute to making that happen? But again, we’re not part of the governance. And so I would very much hope that we find someone, if we decided to go for another team, that somebody can really leverage what we have today and make it even greater.
Q: (Ian Parkes – New York Times) In an investor call this morning in which Liberty Media announced its first quarter results for this year, CEO Greg Maffei said that it was time to strike while the iron is hot with regard to doing a new Concorde agreement, even though the current deal doesn’t run out until the end of 2025. Are the teams aligned with Liberty media’s viewpoint on that? And if you are looking to get a new deal done quite quickly now, what are the advantages to do so, rather than waiting until the end of ‘25? Thank you.
TW: I think most important is to have these conversations behind closed doors. I think if we have a long period of alignment and a contract, such as Concorde, the longer it goes, the better it is, I think, for all of our businesses, but we are in a very early stage. We haven’t really started talking properly. That’s going to happen soon. But it should happen in a constructive way, not maybe live broadcasted and creating controversy.
Q: (RJ O’Connell – Racefans.net) With reports that there may be an expansion from 6 to 10 Sprint weekends, do you feel that that’s the right move for the sport given some of the criticism of the last sprint week in Baku?
TW: So maybe I’ll start, Franz didn’t hear you. I think we are learning by doing at the moment with Sprint races or Sprint weekends, because if we can add to the show we have to, so it’s an experimental phase. Some things work, others maybe not. And then together with the Commercial Rights Holder, with Stefano, we will find the right decisions. I’m more on the conservative side and I have a laugh with Stefano about that. I like a proper Qualifying session on Saturday and the Grand Prix on Sunday. But as a sport we have to develop also. Maybe there is a different route. So as long as we have aligned objectives, which we have, the best possible entertainment, while maintaining the credibility of the sport, we’ll try things.
Source: FIA.com
