Toto Wolff doesn’t want team Mercedes to suffer like Manchester United post-Sir Alex Ferguson.
Forumla 1 team principal Toto Wolff has revealed he studied Manchester United’s failures to help with his management of team Mercedes.
Wolff, 50, holds a record for eight consecutive titles at Mercedes, which is the longest consecutive run in history. It would be fair to say he has inflicted a sense of dominance on F1, like Sir Alex Ferguson did in English football.
Ferguson collected 13 Premier League titles throughout his 26-year reign.
After Wolff took over the running of the Mercedes F1 squad in 2014, Lewis Hamilton led the team to its first title win since 1955 and they’ve enjoyed lots of success to date.
United haven’t come close to winning a Premier League title since Fergie announced his retirement in 2013. That’s something Wolff believes can be used as a lesson.
“I studied why great teams were not able to repeat great title [runs],” Wolff told the Financial Times, in reference to Ferguson.
“No sports team in any sport has ever won eight consecutive World Championship titles and there are many reasons for that, and what is at the core is the human.
“The human gets complacent. You are not energised in the same way you were before. You are maybe not as ambitious.
“I often get the question: ‘How hard is that?’
“I had so many periods, so many episodes in my life that I would judge as difficult, that this is not on the same scale.
“I don’t think it’s challenging in a way because I’ve had much harder times in all of my life, not particularly in Formula 1, but this is actually within my comfort zone.”
