Mercedes’ interest in hiring Toto Wolff came after Pastor Maldonado won the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, he has revealed.
At the time, the Austrian was an investor and CEO at Williams, where the Venezuelan was driving when he shocked the world by holding off Fernando Alonso to take his only Formula 1 win.
That success came as Mercedes was struggling to establish themselves as a top team in F1 in their third season on the grid after buying Brawn GP at the end of 2009.
“It was about my external opinion,” Wolff told Motorsport-Total of their interest. “I tried to show things and give my assessment, I was just one year into my role at Williams and that year we had won a race.
“The question that [Daimler CEO, Dieter] Zetsche asked me was, ‘How can you win a race with Williams and how we can we do it at Mercedes too? What resources do you operate with?’
“And in the end, it was [discovered we used] the same resources but it was only in a follow-up meeting that the idea came up, ‘Could you imagine doing this with us?'”
Wolff’s answer was yes and in 2013, he joined as commercial director and of course the rest is history, with Mercedes winning six straight championships and Toto moving up to motorsport boss in 2017.
But as for how his assessment of the Brackley-based team at that time went down…
“The change in the perception of the [Mercedes] board to our project took place at the end of 2012, at the beginning of 2013,” he said.
“I was asked as an external person to make a comparison as to whether the organisation and resources of the Mercedes team could meet their own expectations in order to win world championships.
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“My summary was that I said, ‘You work with a similar organisation, structure and resources to Williams. My aspiration at Williams is to be in the top five. There is a gap between your expectations and what is actually possible’.
“This decision had to be made, and that decision was made by Dieter Zetsche and his board colleagues at the time. In poker, you would say’ ‘All in!’
“We have repaid this trust, not only with the success on the track, but also with the financial incentives that came with it, so the price-performance ratio of our commitment is very good today.”