Wolff: "I could ‘spontaneously’ hand over the baton"



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Wolff: "I could ‘spontaneously’ hand over the baton"

After deciding to stay in Mercedes this year, Toto Wolff says his time to leave the team in the future could come spontaneously. Rumors circulated that Wolff would step away from his day-to-day role as team leader on the team, but he went the other way and increased his presence in Mercedes.

But Wolff said that whenever he makes the decision to step down from leading the team, he will remain heavily involved in the team process while continuing to hold his 33% stake in Silver Arrows. "I thought for a year if I wanted to continue with this sport and I made a decision - yes," Wolff explained.

“But the decision was not whether I was ready to continue to lead this team from an operational point of view, but rather whether I wanted to stay involved as a shareholder? That means that I become a team, and I become a team in the long run, and this is a decision I made.

" "We are three equal shareholders, we complement each other and whatever I do in the team, I remain in the role of co-owner," he explains. Wolff has yet to announce his biggest decision of the 2021 season: whether to choose Valtteri Bottas or George Russell as his partner for Lewis Hamilton next year.

Bat

Regardless of his choice, the Austrian said that both drivers will have "great opportunities" for their seats in the 2022 season. But when it comes to the day he will leave his position at Mercedes in the future, Wolff has admitted there may be no prior warning before he leaves - which he says will come when he sees someone he thinks could step unhindered into his role.

. In that regard, he said he will stay in Formula 1 all the time while still getting the same competitive sound of fighting for titles all season, but that he can spontaneously hand over the baton. "As long as I enjoy the competition and the stopwatch, I will continue.

But I can spontaneously decide that someone else can carry the bat better - be faster, smarter, fresher than me - but not yet, ”Wolff concluded. It’s also hard to imagine a Mercedes without Wolff who is one of the main people on the team, and without whom Formula 1 wouldn’t be what it is.

We are also aware that Wolff has many who do not respect his work, but he must still admit that Wolff does a great job and that Mercedes would have a much harder time functioning without him.