How Toto Wolff built the most valuable team in F1

Toto Wolff (0:00)

You know, as a continental European, I kind of never got the tradition of standing at the bar and having a pint or two or three, and then having a conversation. What do you talk about?

John Collison (0:13)

Cheers.

Toto Wolff (0:14)

Cheers.

John Collison (0:17)

Many people across many jobs are in the town spotting business, but you're especially in the town spotting business. How do you actually spot a Kimi?

Toto Wolff (0:28)

How do I spot a Kimi?

I think in the, you know, when it comes about spotting racing drivers, you can judge pretty early on in a kid's karting performance, whether that kid has the potential to be a professional racing driver. Even with the tiny ones, you can identify the ones that are doing better than their peers, either because they are younger, you know, if someone that's eight years old beats the ones that are ten in that group, you can have those very early signs of whether that kid has the potential. You can see when someone is comfortable in the kart, you know, going at 100 kilometers an hour in the rain, and that kid does his first lap and comes across the corner, you know, sideways, you know, okay, there are the ingredients for being good at it.

John Collison (1:17)

How quantitative is it? Like, you know, in certain sports, in cycling, you know, there's a metric called threshold power, and Tadej Pogacar, the best in the world, is very clearly just the best in the world on this single metric of, you know, how much power for your weight can you produce. Is there some number that, you know, Kimi and George Russell would stand out on compared to other racers?

Toto Wolff (1:39)

This is what makes our sports so unique. There isn't any. With Tadej Pogacar, you know, you can see that the threshold, watt per kilogram or VO2 max, these are things that are measurable.

But I don't know what Tadej's metrics was when he was 12 So maybe that was not best in class. Maybe that came later. And ingredients of success that you can't measure, personality, how resilient are you to pressure?

How much can you play the team game? When it comes to racing drivers, there are obviously similar KPIs. The stopwatch, you know, the stopwatch never lies. But put them in the same car, because the stopwatch is going to decide whether you're being judged good or not. But underneath the stopwatch, there needs to be technical ability to set your car up in the right way, interact with the engineers, have some kind of social competence of making sure you have sponsors, treat them well. You know, there have been extremely talented kids that never went anywhere, because they were just simply bad people or not intelligent enough.

And then, there is the kind of overwhelming part, and that is this what we call speed. What is speed? And all of your cognitive abilities and neurosensors, the sheer billions of sensors that a human has, that give you an ability that not many have. It's actually to feel what the car does underneath of you. And you can see, with the extraordinary drivers, they feel much more connected to the car and the road than anybody else. One example is, you know, old friend and driver of mine, Louis Hamilton. You have two axles, a front axle and a rear axle, and you have the chassis in between. And when you call a car understeering, it means when you turn the wheel and it goes straight. And that happens over the tires and the front axle. It's pretty normal. But Louis once said something when talking about the car. The car understeers from the front axle to where I sit. Well, that's the middle of the car. How can that understeer?

And the engineers couldn't really identify what he meant, but that is what his body told him or his brain told him the car is doing. And if a driver is able to have that fun, that underlying layer of ability, then that becomes unbeatable. But that is genetics.

John Collison (4:26)

The great drivers strap the car onto themselves. They don't sit in the car, and there's a connectedness.

Toto Wolff (4:31)

Absolutely. Connectedness is the right word. It's actually being one with the car and with the road.

John Collison (4:40)

How did you decide that you weren't good enough to be a professional driver on this topic of town identification?

Toto Wolff (4:48)

I mean, that's one decision. Talking about humiliation and trauma as ingredients for later success.

When I was a child or a teenager, there wasn't really anything differentiating me or outstanding, be it academically or in sports or socially.