Latest news with #constructors
The Independent
2 days ago
- Automotive
- The Independent
The factor that could lure former F1 supremo back to the grid
Christian Horner was relieved of his duties as Red Bull F1 CEO and team principal in July after 20 years, with Helmut Marko confirming under-performance as the reason. Horner led Red Bull to six constructors' and eight drivers' titles, but the team was in fourth place in the constructors' standings at the time of his departure. Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone stated that Horner could return to the sport, but only if he is able to own a stake in a team, a condition he never achieved at Red Bull. Ecclestone described Horner's dismissal as 'ruthless' but acknowledged Red Bull felt they had no choice. Horner has been replaced by Laurent Mekies, and McLaren boss Zak Brown anticipates improved relations between the teams under Mekies' leadership.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Automotive
- The Independent
Christian Horner tipped for F1 return on one condition
Christian Horner has been tipped to return to F1 after his shock departure from Red Bull last month but only if one condition is met. Horner was relieved of his duties as Red Bull F1 CEO and team principal in July after 20 years at the helm, during which time he led the team to six constructors' and eight drivers' titles. The departure brought to an end a tumultuous 18 months for the team, with a divide forming within the management structure despite Max Verstappen claiming his fourth drivers' championship last year. Long-term Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko recently confirmed Horner's dismissal was due to under-performance, with the formerly dominant team languishing in fourth place in the constructors' standings. Speculation has been rife as to what the 51-year-old Englishman's next move will be and he has been linked with a move to Ferrari down the years. Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who is known to be close to Horner, has revealed that the manner of the departure caught him out and that a return to the sport could happen but only on the proviso that he could own part of a team – a set-up that Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has but Horner never got at Red Bull. Ecclestone told Sky Sports: 'At the moment, I think it's still a bit of a shock for him. So he will gradually get over this and realise there are other things in the world to do and he'll get on and do them. 'I have made it known to friends there [Red Bull] that maybe it was a little bit ruthless, to do it in the way that they did it, but they didn't have much choice. They decided this was what they were going to do and they had to get on and do it. 'I don't know how or where or whether he wants to [come back to F1]. He probably doesn't want to because the position he really wanted at Red Bull was to own part of the team. 'Unless he gets somebody to put the money up to buy a team, I can't see it happening.' Horner was replaced at Red Bull by Racing Bulls boss Laurent Mekies, who took over his dual role as chief executive and team principal. The Englishman had a frosty relationship with some of the other F1 team bosses, most notably Zak Brown at McLaren, and Brown has claimed that relations between the two outfits will be better now Mekies is in charge. He said: 'I'm happy Laurent's in the role he is in. I like Laurent, that'll be healthy and maybe we can get back to focusing on competition on the track. 'There's always going to be some political aspects to the sport, but I think it is going to be healthier with Laurent. I'm a fan of Laurent. I have known him for a long time, and it'll be good to go racing against him. 'It went too far [previously]. There's always going to be politicking in F1 – let's try and shut down their flexi-wings and that stuff – but when you start getting into frivolous allegations, that's just going too far. 'If I look up and down the pit lane now, I see us fighting each other hard politically, but the line is not being crossed. And that line got crossed before. I think that we'll see a little bit of a change for the better.'
New York Times
18-07-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
As he ponders signing Max Verstappen, junior rugby caps and Pep Guardiola inspire Toto Wolff
As a team boss, Toto Wolff has won all there is to win in Formula One. A streak of eight consecutive constructors' titles between 2014 and 2021 stands as an F1 record, as his Mercedes squad established one of the greatest dynasties in the world championship's 75-year history. Wolff took charge at Mercedes in 2013, and while much of the team's success since then has much to do with the foundations laid by Ross Brawn before his arrival, Wolff has since guided the team through various different phases and eras. From the explosive intra-team rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, to the post-Hamilton era that started this year. Advertisement The goal has always remained the same: be the best. Be first. A task that, in recent years, has proven more difficult for Mercedes. Its car designs haven't been good enough. 'Without feeling any sense of entitlement, the aspiration is to win races and fight for championships,' Wolff told The Athletic in an interview. 'At the moment, we are clearly among the frontrunners, but not quite there. This year, McLaren is the benchmark. Last year, it was Red Bull. It's the continuous pursuit of lap time that is in all of our minds.' To Wolff, that hunger is not satiated simply by looking only within F1. As all-encompassing as it can be, taking a step back and viewing that world through the prism of other sports, disciplines or industries can offer fresh perspectives. And, crucially, improvements. 'Everything else that I look at outside the F1 bubble,' Wolff said, 'is just to get better in F1.' The 2025 season is the fourth of F1's current car regulations. These coincided with Mercedes losing its place at the very front of the F1 pecking order when it arrived in 2022. 'A brutal awakening,' per Wolff. Mercedes' struggles in the ground effect era have been well-documented. Experiments with radical design solutions failed, causing Mercedes to lag behind the quickest teams. Victories can still be snared in the right conditions, particularly in colder temperatures, but it ordinarily doesn't have the ultimate pace. Nor is there a true understanding behind its form fluctuations. The glimmers offered by the fashions in which it finished 2022 and 2023 proved misleading, not the signs of clear progress the team thought them to be. Worse still, Mercedes also struggled to understand why it couldn't turn a corner with its car design. 'Our car was inconsistent,' Wolff said, reflecting on 2024. 'Clearly we have a more stable platform this year. When we're turning a screw and (when) we expect the car to do something, it does it.' Advertisement Mercedes has at least enjoyed a consistent first half of 2025. George Russell is a podium regular and won from pole in Canada, marking a strong start to his 'leadership' of Mercedes after Hamilton's winter move to Ferrari. Russell's new teammate, 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli, has justified the bold call by Wolff to put a rookie in a high-profile spot, with a sprint pole in Miami and his first podium in Canada. Mercedes' upswing may not have matched that of McLaren, and it may be too late to seriously contend for a championship before the rules change again for 2026. But it shows the lessons from those tough initial years of this era have been learned. 'If you're in a continuous momentum of losing, it is tough, because it's not like you're clearly seeing light at the end of the tunnel,' Wolff said. 'It's also much easier to see once the winning days are back again. While you're winning, you say, 'Oh, that was tough, but we learned so much,' whilst you're in that (bad) place it doesn't feel nice and it doesn't feel like you're learning. It's just tough.' The biggest change for Mercedes this year has been Hamilton's absence. In his 12 years with the team, he won six of his seven world titles and became F1's statistical all-time great (his win total trumps Michael Schumacher's, with the pair level on title totals). There was a time when Hamilton envisaged his relationship with Mercedes lasting for the rest of his life, only for the lure of Ferrari to prove irresistible. Hamilton's exit impacted Wolff, both professionally and personally. Not only was he losing the driver who'd defined so much of his team's success, but he was also seeing a close friend move away. But the 'new normality,' as Wolff called it, has quickly settled. 'I'm very proud of how we've kept the relationships even when it was tough, celebrated the 12 years that we had together, the longest relationship between a driver and the team, and the most successful one,' Wolff said. 'We went out of this as great friends, trusting friends, even though he's in a red garage now and not in a black one anymore.' Advertisement Making that adjustment took Wolff a couple of races. 'Obviously that first photo in front of the Enzo (Ferrari) house, that was, 'OK, this is real…'' Wolff said, adding he was 'upset in a funny way that he wore a suit and I told him, 'It's unbelievable, 12 years and I failed to put you in a suit!'' Wolff said they remain close, and that he and his wife, Susie, still spend time with Hamilton away from races. Russell has stepped comfortably into Hamilton's shoes. His performances so far this year have won acclaim through the paddock. 'It was never like (George) was the puppy,' Wolff said, something reflected in results, with Russell outscoring Hamilton in two of their three seasons as teammates. The links with a Mercedes swoop for Red Bull's Max Verstappen — Wolff spoke to The Athletic prior to those intensifying — remain. But Wolff is clear in viewing Russell within F1's elite; a tricky judgement to make at times, he said, given drivers can be 'victims of the performance of the car.' Wolff added: 'But I think we have a pretty good understanding of who we deem as being the best ones. And there aren't many.' Rugby union is a sport that Wolff has always held in high regard, with its principles of strength, teamwork and resilience. But he also enjoyed some personal success in this sport as a tall teenager, playing in the second row. 'Austrian international!' Wolff proudly recalled. 'I have two caps. An Austrian playing rugby — it's a little bit like people skiing in the Sahara! But we were very motivated.' But didn't Wolff once joke that there were only 15 players to choose from? 'No!' he replied, laughing while feigning offence. 'You make it sound much worse than I did! (I was) school champion, 1990 and 1991!' Humor aside, Wolff has always held a reverence for those at rugby's peak, particularly the New Zealand All Blacks and the idea a shirt holds a 'legacy.' Dr. Ceri Evans, a renowned sports psychologist who was instrumental to the All Blacks' Rugby World Cup wins in 2011 and 2015, has worked with Mercedes during Wolff's reign. Advertisement 'I have an interest in performance,' Wolff said. 'I admire people that do something really well, whether that's in sports or crafting. I have so much interest and admiration when somebody does something good. And obviously sport is so good to see whether it's good enough, because the stopwatch never lies. And that's why I enjoy watching sports.' Another big source of Wolff's inspiration has been Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City manager who, like Wolff, oversaw unprecedented levels of success with a team that had to keep evolving through different eras. Wolff and Guardiola met through a mutual sponsor 'many years ago', according to Wolff. 'He's a friend,' Wolff said of Guardiola. 'Obviously he's living his life, and I'm living my F1 life. But there's always these touch points. They are regular, really good exchanges.' Wolff found a similarity in Guardiola: a total, almost obsessive, dedication to performance and being the very best. 'There's nothing else that takes any room in terms of distraction from us,' Wolff said. 'That could mean that sometimes we come across a little bit manic. But it's just this ultra narrow focus. And many people that I have met that are successful in what they do (is) because that's the only thing that interests them.' But that 'narrow focus' does not mandate ignoring everything outside of F1. For Wolff, everything he considers professionally will always come back to the same priority: the Mercedes team. 'When I look at the financial markets, I try to see what is happening there, which I could translate into F1 in terms of strategies, or risk taking or risk avoidance,' Wolff said. 'What do politics mean for our sponsorship landscape? Down into any detail. Tariffs — what do tariffs mean for F1? It (all) comes all down to my narrow focus on trying to be the best in F1.' Advertisement Quite what these mean for F1 overall is 'very hard to say,' according to Wolff, such is the volatility of global politics and economics. 'It's a moving target,' he said. 'And fundamentally, for our own industry, having insecurity and turbulence in the financial markets is never good when it comes to sponsors that are looking to invest in the sport. Their core businesses may be different today than they were yesterday. 'Mercedes suddenly has a 25 percent tax on cars that are going into the U.S. That is a shift in their business case, obviously. How does that affect us? There are just so many parallels when you look at what's happening in these worlds and then in our bubble.' Wolff is cognizant that F1 is often very insular. 'You tend to see that people believe that this is the only thing that exists,' he said. It becomes about living from race to race, circuit to circuit, airport to airport. But with the eyes of the world watching, it's impossible to ignore the impact of what happens on the outside. 'If you don't look at these dimensions,' Wolff said, 'you won't be able to extrapolate what's important for our team and important for F1.' Following the sudden dismissal of Christian Horner as Red Bull team principal last week, Wolff now stands as the longest-serving F1 chief. He is also one of the few remaining bosses not to come from an engineering background, an increasing trend in recent years. Two of those engineers to come through and move into senior leadership roles in F1 are James Vowles and Andy Cowell, both of whom were crucial parts of the Mercedes championship-winning machine under Wolff. Vowles served as Mercedes' motorsport strategy director, effectively Wolff's right-hand man, before being snapped up by Williams as team principal in January 2023. Cowell, now Aston Martin team boss, oversaw the Mercedes' engine division. When The Athletic asked Vowles in a news conference about Wolff's influence on his career and leadership, Wolff — sat next to him — joked off-mic it covered 'all of it.' But to Vowles, it was no joke. Advertisement 'Toto pulled me under his wing and just slowly allowed me to get more and more responsibility within the organization in a way that exposed me to the difficulties that he's going through daily, but in a safe and positive way,' Vowles said. 'There's no doubt about it. I would have sunk without his expertise and guidance by my side.' Wolff is preparing Mercedes for the start of another 'era' in 2026, when the new technical regulations arrive and a blank slate offers the chance to return to the very top. The last time F1 shifted its engine rules, Mercedes stole a march on the field that took eight years to be overturned. A similar opportunity now awaits. 'My perspective is to be there in the long term and look at this five, 10, 20-year development of the team, and say 'what have we done right? What have we done wrong?',' Wolff said. 'Where have we taken decisions that proved to be the less good ones? And what is it we can change for the future in doing better? 'This is such an interesting exercise to do all the time, and something that I really enjoy.' For Wolff, it's about the future; about taking the lessons from the recent, tricky years, combining them with all he has taken from the world beyond F1, and writing the next chapter for Mercedes. (Top image: Federico Basile/IPA Sport/ USA)
