- Toto Wolff says he offered Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Källenius his resignation several times over the past few years and was turned down, per Motorsport.com.
- Mercedes won seven races from 2022 to 2025 and twelve in 2026 alone, and took its ninth constructors’ title in Brazil one week after Kimi Antonelli became the youngest world drivers’ champion in F1 history.
- Wolff, a shareholder in the team, says he is vetting two or three people to share his job and does not plan to call it a day.
The Team Boss Who Tried to Walk Away Now Has Two Titles to Show for Staying
Toto Wolff became the face of Mercedes in Formula 1 in 2013, and in the lean years he tried more than once to hand the job back. At the 2026 Golden Steering Wheel awards in Berlin, the team principal said so himself.
“I’ve offered Ola [Källenius] my resignation several times over the past few years, but he’s always said: ‘You’ll keep doing this,’” Wolff revealed.
Källenius, the Mercedes-Benz Group CEO, refused to let him walk away. Reporters in Berlin then asked Wolff whether he plans to remain in his role, and he pointed straight back at his boss.
“Yes. Ola is forcing me to,” Wolff joked.
The joke lands at a team that now holds both 2026 championships. Mercedes followed a historic run of constructors’ championships with a severe drop in performance in the ground-effect era, and Wolff admitted he was fully prepared to hand over the reins. Now the team holds the 2026 constructors’ championship, and the man who offered to go is still on the pit wall.
Four Seasons That Felt Worse Than the Numbers
Mercedes took seven victories from 2022 to 2025. This year alone it has taken twelve.
Wolff describes those seasons as years of getting it wrong, working out why, and then finding the explanation was wrong too.
“The thing is, when you are in these difficult moments, like we all are sometimes in our lives, it’s not that easy to keep going,” Wolff said. “Because looking back in retrospect, you’re saying, ‘We needed these tough moments in order to grow as people or to grow as an organisation’. But when you’re down, that is quite difficult to feel.”
“So looking back, I think those last four years were very difficult, between getting it wrong and then kind of understanding why it was wrong and then realising, no, we didn’t understand. And that was a big back and forth.”
“But we will be looking back in 10 or 20 years, and when you look at the statistics, it wasn’t that we were complete losers over those four years, because we finished [third, second, fourth, second successively]. We won races, many races.”
“So it wasn’t that bad at all when you look at the sheer numbers, but it felt not good. And the resilience of the team – the people that held together in those tough times – is a factor.”
By Wolff’s own count, Mercedes finished third, second, fourth and second in the constructors’ standings in those four years, and he says it still felt not good.
Why a Shareholder Can Offer to Walk
Wolff is not an employee in the usual sense. He is a shareholder in the Mercedes F1 team, and he acts as both team principal and CEO of the motorsport division. Stepping back from the pit wall would not end that tie.
On the Cheeky Pint podcast, Wolff laid out a succession plan, and he put it in terms of family and the structure of the team.
“For me, it is not important, you know, to leave a legacy… for me it’s important to do what’s best for the family and to do what’s best for the team, and that means looking at the structure going forward where this team can live without me,” he explained.
His job is too big for one replacement, in his own telling.
“I believe that my job is going to be divided between two or three people that I’m vetting at the moment that I believe are already doing a great job with all of their strengths in various areas,” Wolff confirmed.
The paddock saw a preview of a split like that in 2023. Wolff missed the Japanese Grand Prix for knee surgery, and Communications Director Bradley Lord and driver development head Jerome d’Ambrosio covered his trackside duties. D’Ambrosio now works at Ferrari.
Wolff also says his ownership rules out a clean exit.
“A clean break is probably not possible if I continue to own it… so that kind of executive or non-executive chairmanship is something that may happen, but it needs to happen in a very, very precise way because you can’t be on the sidelines and interfere into the daily business,” he noted.
He has drawn a line around what that role would not be.
“You need to exactly know your role, and that doesn’t mean shooting from the outside and being the one that sits on the grandstand and says you’ve screwed up… you can’t call the drivers directly… It’s not about interfering into the daily business, and that’s how I would aim to be in the future,” Wolff promised.
Tough Love as the Glue
Wolff has been explicit about how he runs the team. At Zandvoort, in the annual media session he holds with Dutch journalists, he explained that he tailors his approach to each driver, while Mercedes holds certain core values. He summed up the idea in one sentence.
“What kind of framework do we need to provide to extract the best performance of the driver, and part of that is obviously the well-being. And that is something that I am very keen on as well. I have never put drivers in a box and have never said this is how you need to be.”
The idea fits Wolff’s view of the modern driver, and at Zandvoort he went further and described what a great driver joining a great team requires.
“I think when a great driver joins a great team, then the dynamics need to work, really. And they can only work when you are completely transparent and open, and you’re able to listen to every argument. I would never be afraid of working with a driver that’s been in another structure for a long time or that is being perceived as difficult. When you listen to what people said about Lewis, he was probably the most difficult ones, or Alonso, saying that he’s difficult, but that doesn’t play a role in my mind. Because coming to the team, you work with each other, you shape each other for the best of the project.”
“Tough love is a word that I often use. As long as our objectives are the same, and that’s winning races and championships, you can be tough with each other. The love part is the joint objective. And we have it in the team. We’re able to sit on a table with my colleagues and we’re allowed to disagree. I have a different opinion, okay, why? Tell me what is yours. And have that tough love part. And rather than approach it with combat, my reaction is not to justify why I was right, but I’m trying to approach it with curiosity. Why does he think, why does that manager, why does this driver think B was right, when I think it’s A?”
“And only if I can make his standpoint better than him, I allow myself to have an opinion on it. That’s important for interactions with people. If you have no fool, idiot, or liar on the other side of the table, every one of us should make that exercise.”
Kimi Antonelli is the test case. Mercedes guided him internally and protected him publicly when 2025 turned extremely tough at times, and Antonelli’s rookie slump shows how hard that season got.
What Two Titles Mean Now
The rewards came a week apart. Antonelli’s championship made him the youngest world champion in F1 history, and Mercedes then clinched in Brazil the constructors’ crown it had last held in 2021.
Wolff measured it against the wider sporting world.
“So it feels really good sealing those two titles. Not many sports teams have done that after a consecutive run of championships, then a difficult spell, and then coming back. So I’m really proud that we are part of this very small group of teams that have done that in all sports.”
The title is Mercedes’ ninth in the constructors’ standings. That equals Williams and sits one behind McLaren, while Ferrari remains the record holder with 16.
For Wolff, the ledger now reads differently from the one he carried through the lean years. He offered to resign in the lean years, and by his account the CEO’s answer was always the same. He has also said, earlier this month, “I don’t plan to call it a day.”
Wolff has said the goal is a structure where the team can live without him. For now he has two titles, a CEO who has refused his resignation, and a plan for the day that changes.
