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Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff talks about the trauma he experienced in his early life, and reveals he still wakes up “having dreamt I am alone”.
Toto Wolff has opened up in several interviews about his childhood experiences and hardships he endured after his father got sick and passed away.
In an interview with the Daily Mail Wolff said the pressures he feels in Formula 1 cannot compare to how hard those experiences hit him.
“Look, I’ve had so many hard years in my life that this — fighting for a Formula 1 championship — is not on the scale,” the Austrian said.
“The mental stress of this doesn’t even move the needle for me. Compared to my childhood, my adolescence, the struggles I had to go through, this is just good fun, because what happened in my early life has left permanent scars.
“It wasn’t just losing my father. My father was very ill for 10 years with a brain tumour. From the first moment I can remember he was ill, until he passed away in my teenage years and we had, literally, no money.
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“He couldn’t work. It changed his personality. I can remember at 14 thinking I wanted to be responsible for myself, I didn’t want to be dependent on anybody, I knew I couldn’t rely on anybody.
“Everyone has his or her story. I’m not asking for sympathy. Everyone has struggles. But compared to my job as team principal — I’m still haunted by this.
“I still wake up having dreamt I am alone. It’s a dream I have had since I was a child. It can happen any time. It is not about pressure, not about the job.
“We discuss mental health these days and people see you are successful and think it must all be fine, but you want to say to them — me, too.
“You’re not alone with that. The scar never goes. So that drives my ambition. I still draw on it all the time.
“In my experience, many successful people — in business, doctors, lawyers — many of them have faced humiliation, have faced trauma early in life,” concluded Mercedes’ team boss.
