Toto Wolff

speaker

484 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard 16 Jan

Toto Wolff’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard · Toto Wolff (team principal of Mercedes F1 team) · 4 Dec 2024 podcast

You want to hear verbatim one of my questions to you? Yeah. Are there certain endeavors that are inherently antithetical to mental health? The goal of a healthy human should be to feel worthy of love and affection regardless of their status or accomplishments. But that simply cannot be the goal of a person pursuing victory or perfection. How do we make peace with that?

Your human goals are antithetical to almost your career goals. As a human, what we would strive for is that I'm worthy of love and affection just because I exist. But in racing and business, it's not that. That's not the rules of the game. So you're balancing what you want as a human and then also what you want as someone engaged in an endeavor.

He's my age.

Wait till you see what's coming in noon. You're texting someone on your team. Help, help.

It's not father-son?

I don't want to ask you this question because I don't think you're going to like it, but it crossed my mind. Was there any part of you that was relieved that Lewis decided to leave and that you never had to make that decision? Absolutely. You couldn't make that decision?

It's so disrespectful.

Yeah, I think it's heartbreaking, but I also think it's the best version of what could have happened.

I think that's it for me. Like as someone who loved someone, even if I wanted them in my life still, I would understand like, yeah, that's what Schumacher did. That's what you do. I want the best for him, even though I'm going to aim to beat him next year.

I had a little fantasy when he left that you were somehow going to get Adrian Newey and Max. Yeah.

I also have that fantasy.

Also, it sucks you were on the inside of it, so it's not as pleasurable. On the outside, what a year. What a year, yeah. What a fucking year.

Right. I've been in many fights on my own. I have a single question about that event.

The most improbable thing happened, which is in 2021, Max and Lewis entered the final race tied at 235.5 points. Something like this. It's .5. Impossible. Same points. And a half point somehow. Add up the improbability that he has 2,500 employees making a car. Red Bull has 2,000 employees. You have all those variables, different designs, two different human beings.

They're finishing every single qualifying within a hundredth of a second. There's too many variables. It's impossible. Now you add in through all this dramatic season, there were points taken away. There were laps given back. There was judgment calls. They land at 235.5. It's not possible. The race goes on. Max is not going to win. He is behind three cars that have been lapped.

There's an accident. The race goes under a safety car. So everyone's bunched up. Now, here's my question. As I understand it, and I could be totally wrong, they unlap cars that have been passed. So the person between Max and Lewis, they're number one and two, but there's three cars in there, but they're in spots 18, 19, 20.

So the rules, as I understand them, is that under a safety car, the cars in between are allowed to unlap themselves. So they're allowed to go out in front of the lead car and join the back of the pack where they belong.

But what's really weird is that they don't unlap them right away. That to me is like, this is the problem. It's not like who did what. It's like, they should have been unlapped right away. They weren't. So four laps goes by and then they make a decision with one lap left to let them unlap. Max is on brand new tires. Lewis is on 13 lap old tires.

The safety car pulls up and Max passes him within two turns and he wins the championship. It would have been Lewis's eighth championship, which would have made him surpass Schumacher. The stakes could not have paused. I mean, the drama of it, it'll never get better. Now, my question, and when I've been in arguments with people, I'm like, are you saying that they don't unlap cars?

Are you saying in that situation they shouldn't have unlapped cars?

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