Sky F1 pundits question Toto Wolff's Mercedes leadership as major concern shared
Toto Wolff has been accused of "reactive" leadership of the Mercedes team after an underwhelming 2023 season.
Mercedes finished second in the constructors' championship behind only Red Bull. But the champions were miles ahead of them and everyone else, while the Silver Arrows failed to win even a single Grand Prix all year.
The team stuck with its unsuccessful 'zeropod' aerodynamic concept for the start of the campaign but, after just one race, team principal Wolff admitted they needed to change course. Sky Sports F1 pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz pointed to that as an example of questionable decision-making from the Austrian.
"In leadership, in direction, in inspiring the team, which I still think he is the best leader, watching him from the outside," he said on the Sky F1 podcast. "People at Mercedes would jump off a cliff with Toto Wolff, wouldn't they? They would go into battle with him. He just instils that leadership.
"Maybe that's a hangover from the seven drivers' and eight world constructors' championships of the past. He keeps the drivers happy. He keeps the sponsors - some amazing sponsors on that Mercedes team... The only thing I'd mark him down on was his keenness to throw the concept away so publicly after qualifying in Bahrain.
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"We don't really know why he managed to sign off what he did sign off, the sister of the bad car. W14 was the sister of W13 and they were both not great cars. Toto must have signed it off - as a leader he could have said, 'I disagree, let's go with the Red Bull concept'. For whatever reason they didn't and he signed it off.
"That very first interview, I remember him coming out so strongly and it kind of took me back when he said it, that this car is bad. This was after qualifying at the first race. To immediately throw the whole concept in the trash can then was the only way that I'm slightly thinking that it wasn't quite the calm, assured Toto leadership that we've seen."
Colleague David Croft, Sky's main F1 commentator, concurred that fans saw "a different side to Toto Wolff this year". He said: "I don't think we saw the calm, assured Toto leadership at all times last year.
"Was his leadership proactive, or reactive? Was he reacting more to situations more than proactive, guiding the destiny of his own team. The decision not to get rid of the sister [car] long before it came onto the track, meant that in the early stages, a lot of it was very reactive. The little technical shuffle around was reactive.
"One of the strengths of Mercedes since 2014 has been they are not following a trend, they plough their own furrow for others to follow. And that is not the case, at the moment, from the outside."
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