{"id":943762,"date":"2026-10-28T09:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T09:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/943762\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T09:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T09:04:13","slug":"toto-wolff-reveals-how-williams-surprise-victory-helped-him-secure-mercedes-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/943762\/","title":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff reveals how Williams’ surprise victory helped him secure Mercedes role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> chief Toto Wolff revealed a jibe at Pastor Maldonado<\/a> that helped him get his place on the team, as the Austrian businessman gave a comparison between the star Mercedes drivers and the then-Williams driver.<\/p>\n

Wolff was a shareholder and executive at Williams<\/a> in 2012, when Maldonado took a surprising victory in the Spanish Grand Prix. At the time, Mercedes had won just once since returning as a works team in 2010, with Nico Rosberg<\/a>\u2019s victory in China earlier that season.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Cheeky Pint podcast<\/a> with Stripe co-founder John Collison, Wolff said that the win with Williams was followed by a call from the Mercedes parent company.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the board members approached me and invited me to Stuttgart, and he said, \u2018How can it be that your private little team can win a race, and we, Mercedes, we can\u2019t do any better than that?\u2019\u201d Wolff said.<\/p>\n

After being given access to the team\u2019s figures, Wolff asked the board what it expected from its F1 programme. The answer was world championships, and the Austrian told them their ambitions did not match the team\u2019s spending.<\/p>\n

\"Toto <\/p>\n

Toto Wolff, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018OK, then one of us is wrong because I\u2019m working on the same budgets, and I\u2019m thinking about finishing in the top six.\u2019 They said, \u2018No, it\u2019s not the same budget. Look, we spend 100 million more.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Yeah, those 100 millions you spend on Michael Schumacher<\/a> and Nico Rosberg, I have a pay driver from Venezuela,\u2019 who won the race, by the way, Pastor. \u2018That\u2019s the main difference.\u2019 They didn\u2019t like that situation at all. I said, \u2018I\u2019m just a messenger, and I\u2019m going to go back to Williams.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Maldonado, who brought substantial backing from Venezuela to Williams, beat Fernando Alonso<\/a> to win in Barcelona from pole. It remained the only grand prix victory of his F1 career.<\/p>\n

Mercedes later returned with an offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually, they came back and said, \u2018We think our model, a corporate running a Formula 1 team, doesn\u2019t function, because it needs to be much more entrepreneurially led, you need to be empowered to make decisions on the spot, and we want you to run this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolff said he initially turned the role down because he was a shareholder in Williams, but Mercedes offered to help him buy into the team instead.<\/p>\n

He joined Mercedes at the start of 2013, and the team went on to win eight consecutive constructors\u2019 championships from 2014 to 2021.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes chief Toto Wolff revealed a jibe at Pastor Maldonado that helped him get his place on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,129598,817,813,816,945,85,4703,511194,129597,819],"class_list":["post-943762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mercedes","tag-sports","tag-toto-wolff","tag-toto-wolff-reveals-how-williams-surprise-victory-helped-him-secure-mercedes-role","tag-united-states-gp","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}