Yahoo Autos Wolff signs Mercedes contract extension to 2026
Toto Wolff will remain Mercedes team principal until at least the end of the 2026 season after signing a three-year contract extension.
Following new deals for drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell last year, Wolff has now committed his future as both team principal and chief executive officer of Mercedes’ Formula 1 team. The contract extends his stay to at least 14 seasons – having joined Mercedes at the start of 2013 – and Wolff told The Telegraph that it was a decision taken with the support of the team’s co-owners Ineos and Mercedes-Benz.
“I think the most important thing between the three of us is that we trust each other,” Wolff said, referencing Sir Jim Ratcliffe of INEOS and Mercedes-Benz board member Ola Kallenius. “At the end of the day, as a shareholder myself, I want the best return on investment. And the best return on investment is winning.
“I’m not going to try to hang on to a position that I think somebody is going to do better than me. I make sure that I have people around who can tell me otherwise. In the end the three of us decided: ‘Let’s do it again’.”
Wolff said he plans to remain a part of the Mercedes F1 set-up long-term even when he no longer holds the position of team principal.
“I’m part of this team in various functions,” he said. ” I’m a co-shareholder. I’m on the board. These are things which will not change whatever executive, or non-executive, role I have. But I feel good. The risk for me is always more bore-out than burnout. And that’s why I embrace the challenges we have today, even though they sometimes feel very, very difficult to manage.”
The past two years have seen Mercedes fighting for second place in the constructors’ championship, far behind back-to-back winners Red Bull. But as part of the article, Wolff hinted at encouraging signs from the 2024 car as he explained a call he’d received from simulator driver Anthony Davidson.
“He was driving Melbourne [in the sim], and he said: ‘The car feels like a car for the first time in two years…’ Obviously I would love this to correlate to the track but we’ve seen in the last two years that this was not always the case.”
