Toto Wolff has revealed that a conversation with Alain Prost early in his own Formula 1 career inspired the Mercedes Team Principal in how to deal with fractious relationships between his drivers.
Under Wolff’s leadership, Mercedes has secured a plethora of titles and victories, notably with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg as the Silver Arrows dominated F1 in the mid-2010s.
But this came at a cost, with Wolff having to deal with several flashpoints following on-track collisions in one of the sport’s most heated rivalries.
Speaking after last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, Wolff recalled a conversation he had with four-time World Champion Prost, who had his own legendary rivalry with McLaren team mate Ayrton Senna that resulted in a long-lasting feud even after they raced for separate teams.
“It was very early in my Formula 1 life, I was at Williams, and I remember, as [if] it was yesterday, I was on the grid, and I think he [Prost] was involved in Renault back in the day or something,” said Wolff.
“I said to him, I saw it on TV, the whole thing, and how did that escalate between the two of you, almost in a naive way because I didn’t understand the dynamics between the drivers, and he said the problem was that you never knew whether you were favoured.
“He said at times I felt that, it was me, it was Alain that was the one that was favoured and then at different stages of the years, it was Ayrton.
“He said that created a dynamic of mistrust in the team and you felt that your direct opponent may be given advantages. Even if it’s just emotional at the end the drivers are little traumatised eight-year-olds that were put in a go-kart, they were scared, it was a parent’s dream that they were chasing.
“Eventually you end up in Formula 1 and they tell you, now you have to be, you have to play the team game and it’s Mercedes or it’s McLaren, so it’s very difficult.”
While not as severe as the Hamilton/Rosberg dynamic, Wolff has had to step in between his current drivers this season, noticeably in Canada when Kimi Antonelli and George Russell went wheel-to-wheel.
But the Austrian believes a transparent and open approach in how the team deals with such issues has made Mercedes stronger, with both Antonelli and Russell obeying team orders this season to help the other driver despite being in a battle for the title.
“You need to feel emotionally protected by the team and I think if you don’t do that and you keep it transparent and balanced, that can create moments where the driver just loses confidence and from that learning for me was, okay, I can never do that,” he said.
“I need to be transparent, and if one day we decide to play the team game in whatever form, I will say so. I will be saying, these are the rules now, and we’ll be very open and transparent.
“And if we have a discussion because the driver disagrees or someone in the team says we should do it differently, then fine, let’s have the discussion. So, I would think that this is how we want to behave.”
