Toto Wolffs admits to ‘hammering himself’ over contribution at Mercedes amidst the team’s upsetting results

Mercedes are often held as one of the most successful teams in the history of Formula One. Even though they are much younger to the other racing giants like Ferrari and Williams, the Silver Arrows hold an impressive record for winning eight Constructors’ World Championship titles thanks to their stellar line-up headed by Lewis Hamilton since 2014. But the German outfit showed a fall from grace in the 2022 season as they were bested by Red Bull and their RB-18. Mercedes thus got usurped from their top position, and are still finding ways to get back there.

As the Team Boss of the Brackley outfit, Toto Wolff is responsible for how Mercedes perform during the race weekends. The Austrian even holds some stake at the team, this making it obvious that he is quite invested in seeing them succeed. But due to the disappointing performances in 2022 and then in the most recent 2023 season, Toto has admitted that he often questions his contribution to Mercedes now.

It’s tough, because I keep hammering myself. I keep questioning myself, my contribution all the time, because I feel myself as the team, as do many others. So, in difficult times, you wake up in the morning and you think ‘What is it that I need to do?

Toto Wolff said about questioning his contribution to Mercedes’ results, via PlanetF1.

Despite being the Champion team only two years ago, Mercedes got a single Grand Prix win in 2022 thanks to George Russell. But the recently-ended 2023 season saw them fall further back as they failed to get any race wins at all. But they managed to beat Ferrari to the second position on the Constructors’ Standings solely because of their consistency in getting as many podium wins as they could.

Toto Wolff claims he has initiated a ‘no blame’ culture within his team

There is no doubt that Mercedes are going through a rough patch these last two years due to the lack of promising results. At a time like this, it is natural for the team members to be questioning where they went wrong for the Silver Arrows to perform so poorly against their rival team Red Bull. But in Toto Wolff’s words, Mercedes have a ‘no blame’ culture amongst the team members where they share the brunt of the poor results but do not blame themselves for them.

While speaking of how he always questions himself for Mercedes‘ performances in the last few years, Toto Wolff was asked if there has been some pointing fingers within the team due to the upsetting results.

No, because this is something we have been instilling in the organisation straight from 2013. We blame the problem and not the person. We are a safe environment, nobody got fired because of nonperformance. We always find solutions. So, no-blame culture, we stuck to it, which I’m very proud of.

On the other hand, Red Bull are not so lenient towards their recruits whenever they find a patch of ‘nonperformance’ as Toto Wolff called it. Even their sister team AlphaTauri–rumored to be named Racing Bulls soon–has seen quite a few drivers getting axed as they could not meet the expectations of RBR Chief Advisor Helmut Marko. The latest of this lot is Nyck deVries. The former F2 and Formula E Champion lost his F1 seat mid-season as Red Bull brutally removed him from beside Yuki Tsunoda to bring Daniel Ricciardo citing performance issues.

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