Mercedes CEO Answers F1 Team Principal Questions

Hi, my name is Toto Wolff.

I'm the CEO and team principal

of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team.

And I'm here to answer your questions.

So this is F1 Team Principle Support.

[upbeat music]

@CauliflowerNice.

How do you make decisions when the data says one thing

but your instinct says another?

Formula 1 is the only real spot where you have

that interaction between engineering and the human.

So we have all of these data channels

that provide us information around what the car does,

and then you have a human in the car that's driving it.

You can't really map that human

because what does it mean to have a good and a bad day?

What does it mean to slide a car

and the engineer saying, I can't see that.

You know, the driver will say,

Well, I think the car moves on braking.

The engineer says, It doesn't do that really much.

So I am a little bit of the translator

between the driver feedback

and what the engineers see in the data.

I've been eraser myself, but I'm realistic.

This is a data-driven sport. This is engineering.

So instinct plays a role when it comes about judging

how a driver feels

and judging about whether strategy is realistic

from the driver's point of view.

And in that context, I'm helping the engineers

that actually run the operation

with the kind of more common sense approach,

but it's that interaction data

and instinct that hopefully makes a team successful.

The next one, @maxfriedrice.

What happened to F1 team principles accusing everyone

and their mother of cheating?

Where is your rage?

You think I'm not enraged anymore.

I would see this as a success.

You know, I've been very angry, very emotional at times

because when we are being taken for a ride,

I see this as my tribe.

I want to protect the organization and the people

and this is where I can emotionally react.

Now as a leader of the team, I should be also balanced

and not oscillate between exuberance and depression.

So I'm trying to get better over the years

and have less of that rage.

Managers and trainers

and coaches are very emotional about it

in order to motivate their players,

motivate the organization.

So we are a little bit all from the same cloth.

We are sports people

and we want the best for our organizations and for the team.

We are also in a different era now.

I think the team principles

of the past were the ones running the organizations

being co-owners stems from the Frank Williams days

and Ron Dennis where it was smaller organizations

and probably I'm the last dinosaur left

of that old generation,

today is more common sense balanced engineers

that runs some of the team.

The next one up is @WheelWithWobi,

Who is currently the most underrated driver in F1?

for me, it's clear, it's George Russell.

He's won everything, in go-karting in Formula 3, Formula 2,

he came into the team next to Lewis Hamilton,

the biggest sports star in our industry,

if not one of the biggest overall.

But George has grown so much as a driver in his skills

and as a personality.

And I think today he's definitely right up there

and someone that leads the team going forward.

@bybrandanwhite.

Do you think we've reached a ceiling

of F1's global growth or is this just the beginning?

I think neither of the two

because the sport has grown over more than 70 years now,

and there were episodes where the incremental was huge

and other phases where it kind of leveled off.

But overall the trend is always up.

I think what we see now is that we had great racing,

great rivalries, good personalities coming up, polarizing

and controversial people also.

Netflix certainly had a big part in the success,

particularly in the United States.

The social media activities

of the drivers are much more than they used to be

in the past.

And I think all of that kind of made us grow very strong.

Our strongest growing audience base is young females,

15 to 24,

total female fan base is 42% believe it or not.

And I think that it's quite balanced

between the hardcore fans of the past

that love the loud, roaring engines

and all of the new generation, the Gen Zs that follow it

with great interest from the free practice sessions

all the way to the race.

Now I'm always seeing the world

in a half empty glass perspective rather than half full.

And we need to be continuing

to handle the sport with great care.

We must never believe that this is the real deal,

this is so successful and it's gonna continue forever,

the Apple deal taking the rights in the US

which is fantastic for the sport.

So we need to be really aware

that we have a great thing at our hands

and it needs to be entertaining,

it needs to be unpredictable

and that's what we always try to calibrate in the right way.

So the next question, @yogiv88 asks,

How is a typical Formula 1 team set up?

The typical setup is

that we are divided into three entities.

One is producing the engines, that's about 1,200 people.

The other one, which is all chassis-related items,

it's in principle the same size.

And then there is the race team itself,

which is around 150 people that travel to the races

and are basically deploying the product

and that includes the drivers.

So what you see on television is only the race team.

So it's literally the tip of the iceberg

and most of the performance is being done in the factories.

Next up, ryogadan asks,

What does an F1 team principle actually do?

So as a team principal,

I have responsibility not only for the racing team

but all of the wider organization, we about 1,200 people.

And it's not only technical, it is also the commercial side,

legal, finance, HR, IT,

and obviously I'm in charge of doing that in a way

around people that run racing cars.

@joshahamilton, Question for the F1 geeks,

is team principle the same thing as crew chief?

Formula 1 is a bit weird in that sense

because a team principle is

what you would see in American sports as the president,

the CEO, the coach, the trainer, and the crew chief.

So it's all within our roles.

Now obviously our organizations have grown

from back in the day a hundred people to 2,000 people

that are dedicated to these roles.

But fundamentally the of the team principal is to look

after all of these so there is no clear, let's say cut,

between a CEO US-style sports team

and the sporting director

or the coach is what we do as team principals.

From pickle-shrimp.

Why do Mercedes race engineers, strategists

and Toto sit inside the garage during races?

So this is a little bit of a legacy situation.

In the previous setups of teams,

the team principal would sit on the pit wall

to oversee the pit lane

to oversee what's happening on the main straight.

We don't use stopwatches

and we don't look at cars that are passing by,

but it's kind of remained there.

I have decided to change it for myself

not to sit on a pit wall but to be in the garage.

So you can see me standing

in the middle island center console so I can see the left

and the right side of the garage

and that gives me the best possible overview.

The mechanics refer to it as the fantasy island

because engineers

and myself we dream stuff up there

rather than doing the hard work.

So where I sit, I basically have a few data channels

that I look at.

I can follow all timing, comparison to the other drivers,

I have charts and overlays that I look at,

what are our cornering speeds looking like

compared to the opposition?

I'm seeing GPS data, how the cars zoom around the track.

So there's plenty of information.

I'm also speaking to many engineers.

My intercom channel has about 30 people that I listen to

and it's a little bit like an airplane.

So you get used to hearing voices out of the chaos.

That is a big part of deciding

what the strategy needs to do,

being a partner for some of the engineers

and challenging them.

This question is from @remybergsma.

What's the toughest decision you made this season

and also the easiest?

Some of the tough and easy decisions,

you know they happen outside of the trek.

I'm responsible to running quite a large organization

and when it comes about taking decisions

on an organizational structure,

telling people that maybe we should change their role

or maybe not have them anymore,

that is always really difficult,

especially when some of the people have been with you

on a journey for quite a long time.

And equally I really enjoy having conversations

with the engineers, the drivers,

the marketing people when growing the spot together.

So it's mostly the human interaction

with all its difficult aspects of discussions

and all of the positive ones.

@RafaKill28.

Simple question,

how many hours of sleep do you get a night?

The job of team manager

seems like a job you can easily practice 24/7.

Now I think sleep matters us for most of all

and we don't get a lot of sleep, we travel a lot.

I did more than 550 hours of airplane last year

through the various time zones, but that comes with the job.

So I'm trying to get my seven to eight hours sleep.

I try to sleep whenever I'm tired, you know,

put me on a plane, I'll sleep.

And when I'm back in Europe I try to have a strict regime.

I'm not a morning person

so for me it's no meetings before 10 o'clock

and the same way I stay very long,

I go to the gym at eight o'clock in the evening, have dinner

and get these hours of sleeping and you should do the same.

So the next one is from @shufflupaguss.

What's the most important psychological trait

a driver engineer needs to thrive under pressure?

I think pressure needs to be your comfort zone in a way,

there is no hiding.

This is a sport where you constantly operate

with immense pressure.

You know, I'm always laughing a bit when companies tell us

we need to report four times a year in our earnings scores

and it's difficult for a long-term strategy deployment

and I'm think we are reporting 24 times a year

and we are only as good as our last race.

So it goes from hero to zero

and the other way around,

one weekend is the Mercedes dominance continues

and the next week and he's told he should leave the team

because they're losing all the time.

So this is the pressure environment we find ourselves,

now the drivers have gotten used to it

because they have been go-karting since they're six.

So it's almost like the normal state

and only the ones who can sustain that pressure

will eventually make it into Formula 1.

It's not only talent.

And the same on the managerial side.

If pressure is something that you don't enjoy,

maybe having a role that is not at the forefront

of the race team, it's better for you.

So we are all different personalities,

we're all different in terms of strengths and weaknesses

and we are trying to position the individuals

in their kind of field of competence.

@sidbarca10 asks,

What are the biggest challenges you face

when running the Mercedes F1 team

and how you and your team overcame those challenges,

like what is your approach to problem-solving?

It's all about the human.

We won eight world championship titles in a row

and that hasn't been done in any other sport.

You know the Boston Celtics will claim

they did it in the NBA,

but obviously that's a regional championship only,

just joking obviously.

But our sport is is engineering.

Our sport is data, but data don't take decisions, humans do.

And being able to set up a framework

for those high-performing individuals, being authentic

and taking an interest in the individual,

what is it that I can do to make you perform better?

I can't design an aerodynamic surface,

but I try to spend some time with the guy who can.

And I hope that this trickles down in the organization

that we look after our people whilst acknowledging

that this is the most difficult environment

that you could possibly operate.

It's Formula 1, it's the pinnacle of motor racing,

Random_citizen_.

Can someone explain to a new F1 fan

why Mercedes is such a dominant team?

Now first of all, we don't feel any sense of entitlement

to be a dominant team.

We have been lucky to having had the right people

in our organization because it's a human spot as well.

Whilst there is all of the engineering side,

it's humans in the car and outside of the car.

And I think we have such a great group of individuals

that over the many years has grown but has also changed.

We've had very good years, we've had more difficult ones,

but we've always been part of the top game,

eight consecutive world championships.

We finished second and third, unfortunately fourth one time,

but we've always won races

and maybe that's why the perception is

that we are dominant team

and obviously Mercedes,

it's the best car brand in the world.

We have to be kept on our toes.

We must never stop pushing the limits

because in this sport it could quickly fail.

So this question is from the Ask Formula 1 Subreddit.

How has AI or predictive analytics

actually changed how you approach strategy?

How has it evolved?

So of course AI is an area

that is going stronger and stronger in Formula 1

because we are data-driven business,

we have used this a long time.

But having said that is really difficult

to model the driver,

to model the human with all of its infinite sensors.

We are playing through 10,000 possible scenarios

when it comes to race strategy.

And like Mike Tyson said,

Everybody has a strategy

until he gets punched on the nose.

So this is how racing pans out.

You can discuss all kind of scenarios

and then there's the human in the car

and he reacts differently to what you expected.

So I love that.

So, @finishmetea.

Have any of the F1 team principles

ever driven one of their cars?

Many of us have been racing drivers,

some better, some worse.

But I decided once I quit professional racing

that I wouldn't drive our own F1 cars.

I have my own expectations what performance would look like.

And I'm 53 now

and I wouldn't want to see myself

not meeting my own expectations.

But there's some colleagues of mine that enjoy doing that.

Maybe not zooming around the tracks like pros would do,

maybe more snail speed, but they still do that for fun.

Others play golf or padel.

For me it's rather trying to do the best for the F1 team

and certainly driving our cars,

that wouldn't add any performance to what we do.

[Lauren] Wait, could you name who the colleagues are?

No, then I really put them into the water.

[Lauren laughing]

They know.

This one is from @winterwo1f.

If you were to design/customize your own F1 car

without limitations,

how would you design it to make it stand out?

Well, there's a technical aspects.

What I would design is the fastest car

that could potentially go around the track on this planet.

I would do fans below the car where you have suction

so the car is literally sucked onto the ground.

Big wings and the huge 12 cylinder engine that roars,

I would make them light, nimble,

when it comes to the design,

you know we are the Silver Arrows.

It's quite an interesting historical aspect.

The Mercedes in Formula 1 have been white

and in one race, car was too heavy,

so they had to take off the white paint

down to the bare aluminum to make the minimum weight.

And that's the color that stayed with us since then.

But since Lewis joined the team,

we stand for diversity and equality,

and Lewis suggested let's make the car black.

And so today the modern Formula 1 Mercedes car is black

and silver.

So this is a design

that I would in any case maintain from a dream car.

Lots of Mercedes stars and the AMG logo, the Chevron.

So this is everything for today. I hope you learned a lot.

Thanks for watching F1 Team Principal Support.

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