Toto Wolff is a team boss who is used to success and won the Formula 1 constructors’ championship eight times in a row with Mercedes. But the Silver Arrows have been following behind for two years, and Red Bull is now the measure of all things. How to turn the tables? Good advice is expensive – and comes from, of all people, Wolff’s arch-enemy.
Forming Mercedes into a winning team again would be a “huge challenge” for Wolff, said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner in the Sky Sports F1 podcast. The Austrian “came into the sport on the back of a winning racing team” in 2013 and had great success for many years. It then “suddenly” disappeared, Horner alluded to the Mercedes crash, which began with the introduction of new aerodynamic rules in 2022.
This is a painful process for Mercedes; people within the racing team are now “questioning things,” said the Brit. “It’s inevitable that fingers will be pointed and the team will be tested when you’ve won for many years and then suddenly you’re not winning.”
In such a situation, as a boss you have to make sure that the employees “believe in themselves, you have to instill trust in them,” Horner advises his Mercedes counterpart. “You have to motivate people, you have to lift them up.”
It is a “completely different challenge” to get back to the top than to be at the top.
Formula 1: Red Bull also went through a crisis
Horner experienced a similar phase of weakness with Red Bull as Mercedes did this year. After four titles in a row with Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull literally crashed in 2014 with the introduction of hybrid engines and had no chance against Mercedes in the following years. It was not until 2021 that the team with Max Verstappen was ready for the World Cup again; the Dutchman secured his first title in a memorable final against Lewis Hamilton.
“That’s why I’m particularly proud of Red Bull,” said Horner about the bulls’ comeback.