He recently bought a stake in the collapsing Williams team. Most would’ve said- that was a fallacious move, but Toto Wolff wouldn’t have done anything stupidly or without giving it deep thinking. He has been ruling the grid for the past half a decade in a manner that can only be called iron-fisted dominance since there’s just been one team in Formula 1 on the top of the tables and that’s Toto Wolff-driven Mercedes.
No one else has done anything to come even close to challenging Mercedes’ authority.
That said, now Toto Wolff has shown some keen interest toward backing the idea for low F1 budget caps. Can you believe that? Another sublime masterstroke, or is there some typically flamboyant and precise thinking behind this move?
We don’t know.
What we do know is that, as a matter of fact, Toto Wolff has expressed his support for the uncanny idea on the basis of a condition of sorts.
So what is it after all?
It turns out that the team boss at Mercedes wants the costs cut at all levels of racing, this, he implies is only to build in the idea of ‘fairness.’
As it is, the teams with bigger budget means they have access to increased spending, hence their R&D, exploration, know-how tends to take a broader framework and development than other teams that play midfielders or to put it bluntly, are left with little option but to just do the match-up to the frontrunners.
In that case, it never makes for a pretty scenario. So what does Toto Wolff have to say about the one big decision in 2021 – the budget cuts for all F1 teams- that he feels is going to the change the direction of the sport altogether.
First of all, we’re living in a financial reality that is very different to pre-COVID-19, and we have accepted the lower budget cap and it is a must that successful F1 franchises earn money rather than lose money,” he told Autosport.
“For us, it is also a way of making sure that Daimler not only appreciates the sporting and marketing benefits of the platform but also makes it as cost-neutral as possible and I believe this is why we need to support such a cost cap.”
That being said, one wonders if a sense of new direction is what Toto Wolff is expecting for the sport basis the new rules that are going act as ‘covenants’ of Formula 1 in 2021?
“For us, it means readjusting, it means changing the way we do things and deploy personnel in new areas!”
The Austrian’s comments said, the one big thing fans would want to see, and not those who wear Silver Arrows on their hearts but those for whom the world is in colours of ‘red’ and ‘navy blue’ could be a change in the pecking order.
Yet, too early to say whether the new rules will fix Ferrari’s woes or amplify Red Bull’s rise to the point of the past constructor champions to ferry ahead to the very front again.