Toto Wolff: Mercedes's billion-dollar F1 boss

8:08Zing Tsjeng:That sounds like a cool thing to be at university. What are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm a racing driver at the weekend.

8:13Simon Jack:I can't attend the lecture. Sorry, I'm racing.

8:15Zing Tsjeng:He spent three years competing in Formula Ford, which is kind of the minor league of motorsport. And to make money during this time, he took a job handing out flyers for electronic shops, wearing a gold cape and gold face paint. He said, it was so embarrassing because people recognised me, but I pushed through. I really needed the money.

8:33Simon Jack:And during this time, he'd won a legendary endurance race, the 1994 Nürburgring 24 Hours. But Toto was no Lewis Hamilton. His racing teacher, Walter Lechner, told him that he was too slow for Formula One and that he should go and do something useful instead. He's also, it's important to note, probably a little bit too tall to be a racer, particularly in F1. Some sources put Toto at 6.2, others at 6.5. And that is quite large for a racing car driver. It is.

9:00Zing Tsjeng:And every single thing on a Formula 1 racing car has to be as light as possible. And you've got to fit it all into quite a small space. So in a way, they're like mechanical jockeys. There are some big ones, but the engineering teams complain about having to accommodate a big driver. In 1994, at the peak of his junior career, disaster strikes. His sponsor pulled out after a series of high profile and fatal crashes over a few weeks. involving Ayrton Senna, Roland Ratzenberger and Karl Wendlinger. I remember that really well because Ayrton Senna, he's such a hero in his home country of Brazil. They had three days of national mourning after he died, so he was a very big figure.

9:37Simon Jack:And there was also a really brilliant film, Kord Senna, about this very moment. Amazing.

9:40Zing Tsjeng:Ayrton Senna, who was the undisputed god of the sport. The champion. The champion. Had a fatal crash and it basically threw safety in Formula One into sharp relief. And you could perhaps understand why sponsors said, We don't want to be associated with a sport that looks so dangerous.

9:57Simon Jack:Well, without cash or sponsors, Toto has to shelve his dream. He takes an internship at an investment bank in Warsaw, but he remembers crying his eyes out during his lunch breaks. He pushes through and he started to learn about investment banking in the markets. And in his words, the next dream started. Over the next two years, he would rise through the ranks of that bank.

10:16Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, his next move was from banking into sales management at an Austrian steel company. After two years there, he spotted an opportunity to set up his own consultancy business, acting as an agent for the same steel company in Poland. And, you know, that would be advising on the strategy of how to buy, where to buy, where the markets are, what the production costs are, the whole ecosystem of steel, which is a truly international business. So probably pretty handy for his future skills. He built up a roster of clients before deciding to take a sabbatical in the US to figure out what he was going to do next.

10:49Simon Jack:So Toto heads to San Francisco for a few months at probably exactly the right time. This was the late 1990s and the dot-com boom is well underway. And there he spots the growing potential in technology and decides to capitalise on it back in Vienna. He returns and in 1998 launches one of the first tech-focused venture capital firms in Europe. And he launched it with his childhood friend René Berger. They name it March 15 after the day it was established.

11:16Zing Tsjeng:Toto found the most popular website in Austria. then called SMS.AT, which was a free text messaging service run by a teenager called Marcus. He drove to meet Marcus in a Porsche. Marcus said Toto could have half the business if he could find him investors and if Marcus could borrow the Porsche. It's quite an interesting little thumbnail sketch, isn't it, of the kind of impressionable young people who are running tech businesses. I'll tell you what, you can have half the business if you let me drive your Porsche. So Toto found the investors. As Marcus quickly sold his half for over$20 million, Toto kept hold of his stake, which in time would become much, much more valuable.

11:54Simon Jack:For the next couple of years, Toto identified more early Austrian internet and tech companies. He would raise funds for them by finding investors, getting on the phone, cold calling potential deep pockets before selling them on for a profit.

12:07Zing Tsjeng:According to Toto, they didn't have a single failure because we never paid for any of these investments ourselves. I came in with no money. I'd say, I'll raise money for you, make you a business plan. And if we're successful, I will become a shareholder, get shares for my trouble. So it was basically consulting for shares. If the company did well, we did well.

12:25Simon Jack:How unusual is that kind of setup?

12:27Zing Tsjeng:I think it's pretty unusual that the people organising the deals aren't required to put some of their own money in. These days in private equity funds, you'll have limited partners, which are all the people who are investors in your fund. And you'll have a general partner who's the person who runs it, like Toto Wolff in this case. And that general partner would usually have to put in some money of their own because the other investors want them to have some skin in the game. This has got to matter to you financially. If you're going to ask me for money, I want to see the colour of your money going in as well.

12:55Zing Tsjeng:So that is quite unusual, I'd say.

12:57Simon Jack:You've got to put your balls on the dashboard. Balls on the dashboard.

13:01Zing Tsjeng:Yes. But you've still got to be quite a good salesperson to drum up that kind of money. If you're cold calling people who are giving you money to invest in venture capital stuff, obviously it looks like such a no-brainer to invest in technology looking back. But at that time, it still would have required quite a lot of persuasive skills, quite a lot of charm. If you've seen him in interview, he's not the most, I wouldn't say the most charming guy in a way.

13:25Simon Jack:He's certainly got a way about him.

13:26Zing Tsjeng:He's got a way about him. He's got a kind of gravitas and he's got a kind of directness about him which may have impressed people. But at that time, you know, I think people were looking for ways into technology and he was able to give them away.

13:38Simon Jack:I think maybe the art of selling is very underrated in tech. Don't you think? When we discussed Elon Musk in our episode on him, you said that one of the most remarkable things about him wasn't the tech prowess, but the ability he had to sell people on his company.

13:51Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, he was the greatest salesman, greatest fundraiser in the world ever, is what some of the people who know him have told me. I have to say, my first job ever was selling advertising space in a computer magazine. Were you good at it? I was actually pretty good at it. I've got to say.

14:08Simon Jack:You're wasted in journalism.

14:10Zing Tsjeng:But the thing was, you go out and you basically sell someone a blank piece of paper. And it was at a time when all the early computer makers wanted to put their little adverts in these big magazines. It was a real scramble for it. It became a very profitable business having computer magazines back in the, gosh, I'm saying early 90s. But I tell you what, those sales skills about trying to pin someone down are incredibly valuable lessons, I think. Sometimes when you're trying to persuade someone to do an interview, those skills come right back.

14:35Simon Jack:Very true. And I think if you're trying to get a job in tech, being charming actually gets you quite a long way.

14:40Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. Anyway, in 2000, T-Mobile, a mobile telecoms company, bought a chunk of that company which he hung on to, remember, SMS.at, which had changed its name to UCP, in what was at that time Austria's largest ever private equity transaction. And it wouldn't be the last time Toto made money from this company. Within two years of founding March 15, Toto had made a profit of more than$30 million. So by the millennium, Toto's a multimillionaire aged just 28.

15:21Simon Jack:While his venture capital fund was growing that bank account, Toto had never quite lost his love for motorsport.

15:27Zing Tsjeng:And now he's got a few quid.

15:28Simon Jack:Yeah, he does more than a few quid, in fact. So he gets a call one day from an old racing driver friend who asked if he wanted to do a six-hour race. After that, Toto realised he hadn't actually lost his driving skills. But as you say, now he had the money for it.

15:42Zing Tsjeng:So age 30, he returned to racing part-time, mainly with Grand Tour cars, GT cars. These are kind of luxury high-performance vehicles. They're designed for fast but comfortable long-distance driving. His first year back, he came sixth in the FIA Gran Turismo World Championship. A few years later, he won the Dubai 24-hour race, a major round-the-clock race for both professional endurance drivers and a bucket list race for amateurs. So amateurs who've got the kick can enter. Yeah, it's a bit like the Le Mans 24-hour race, but done in Dubai.

16:13Simon Jack:And these are just races where you just race for 24 hours straight.

16:16Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, you change drivers. Sometimes the cars will break down. You have a bunch of mechanics on board. Like you say, it's a test of endurance, both in driving and engineering terms.

16:25Simon Jack:Yeah, and you just whiz around the same track for an entire day straight.

16:28Zing Tsjeng:Oh, yeah, through day and night. It used to be seen as a rather glamorous, romantic, cool thing.

16:33Simon Jack:Well, Toto was also starting to, at this point, mix business with pleasure. In 2002, he started a new venture, co-owning a racing driver management company with two-time Formula One world champion Mika Hakkinen. There, he looked after some young drivers who, in his words, drivers that were like me 10 years prior had no means, so I was paying for them. This included the early career of a Finnish Formula One driver, Valtteri Bottas.

16:57Zing Tsjeng:He also had a boy of his own to look after at home because in 2002, Toto's first son was born. He'd recently married a woman called Stephanie, though there's very little information. available about that relationship. We know they also had a daughter together and were together for the best part of a decade, probably divorcing in the late 2000s.

17:15Simon Jack:But let's get back to the money and there was plenty more of it still to be made. In 2004, Toto and Renee founded another venture capital fund called March 16. This time they focused on investing in medium-sized industrial companies and listed companies, although still in the internet and tech space, which was itself at the time maturing.

17:34Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, this fund was a bit larger. It had a team of 27 people, offices in Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, Tel Aviv, Warsaw. That text messaging company we've mentioned twice already, now called UCP, was sold to the American tech group Amdox at a value of 275 million. So well worth hanging on to that one.

17:53Simon Jack:Yeah, well worth giving half a Porsche to a teenage boy.

17:56Zing Tsjeng:I bet the other guys saw about that.

17:58Simon Jack:Well, there's another investment worth mentioning. After that big payout, Toto acquired a 49 % stake in German company HWA, which builds and races Mercedes cars in Germany's domestic touring series. Engineer Hans-Werner Ulfrecht, whom the company is named after, described Toto in the following words in German. And I will absolutely butcher this. We say, Erkan Mdai Eich Schauen. He can see round corners. When he makes a strategy, he is not only looking straightforward, he is also looking what is coming from the side. and HWA made him some serious money. He helped to take it public, which earned him$85 million.

18:34Zing Tsjeng:So he's getting rich on some sort of technology stakes, which he's then using to fund his racing thing. So we now get to 2009. Toto's now 37 years old. He's come to the Nürburgring, the first track he'd ever stepped foot on and the one that inspired him to race, remember. It's nicknamed the Green Hell. It was actually taken off the Grand Prix circuit in 1976 after Austria's greatest racing driver, Niki Lauda, had a very near fatal crash. I remember that one pretty well as well. He got very badly burnt, Niki Lauda. But Toto was attempting to beat the lap record for the Nordschliefer, the North Loop, and the longest section, 13 miles long, with around 170 corners.

19:13Zing Tsjeng:That's the thing about the Nürburgring. It is much longer than your average Formula One track. It goes right through the forest. It's quite a thing.

19:19Simon Jack:Well, quite a spectacle.

19:20Zing Tsjeng:Yeah.

19:20Simon Jack:Well, in a Porsche 911 RSR, he was attempting to beat a lap time of seven minutes, seven seconds for a Grand Tour of a car. and many friends, including Niki Lauda, told him it was stupid. Or as Toto put it, you had to squeeze your arse cheeks and commit. That is a real Toto wolfism, I think. On his warm-up lap, Toto beat the record by almost five seconds but he felt there was something wrong with the car and the tyres didn't feel quite right. But when it came to it, he pushed the worry out of his mind and he says, this is where I broke my rule to take the calculated risk.

19:52Zing Tsjeng:His tyre blew out in the most dangerous part of the track and he hit the guardrail at 180 miles an hour. The car spun 180 degrees, it smashed into steel barriers and recorded an impact of 27 G, 27 times the force of gravity. When the car finally stopped rolling, Toto got out of the car, took off his gloves, stepped over the guardrail and then collapsed. He was found on the grass and only regained consciousness in the ambulance.

20:16Simon Jack:He had severe concussion and a broken vertebrae. At the hospital, incidentally, the same one, Nicky Lauda, had received what people thought would be his last rites. Toto initially thought that he was paralysed. He said, in that moment, I said to myself, no more competitive racing. But he had no major lasting issues, thankfully, except that the crash had dislodged his olfactory nerve, so he couldn't smell or taste anything for six months.

20:40Zing Tsjeng:I think that is quite a getaway. But the crash did bring him something. After his accident, he got a call from a Scottish driver called Susie Stoddart, who was racing cars for HWA. She called to wish him well on behalf of HWA Mercedes drivers, just passing on the respect from everyone in the organisation. At that point, they didn't know each other that well. But as Susie remembered, it was supposed to be a 10-minute call. It lasted an hour. And after eight months of dating, they got engaged and married two years later and went on to have a son in 2017. So something good came out of the crash.

21:10Simon Jack:Something very good came out of the crash. I mean, it also meant that Toto stopped racing himself. But instead, he got more involved in the business side of racing. And that will be absolutely pivotal to how he becomes a billionaire. Seven months after the crash, he bought a 16 % stake in Williams Racing Team, getting a seat on the board. And Williams was a pioneering team in Formula One. They held multiple world championships in the 80s and 90s. But they had been struggling to recapture that old dominance.

21:37Zing Tsjeng:And although his role was initially financial, it did bring him closer into the sport that he loved, of course. In 2011, he advised Williams on their IPO, their sale of shares. And by July 2012, he increased his involvement by becoming an executive director, senior leadership role, focused on the overall business, operational, strategic management of the team, that kind of stuff. A role just below or alongside what's known as the team principle.

22:01Simon Jack:His wife Susie had also recently signed up with Williams as a development driver. I think these are roles where you're testing the cars to make them better for the actual drivers. and that year Williams got its first race win in eight years at the Spanish Grand Prix. And to celebrate, Toto and Susie ate tacos on the beach and she told Toto, remember this moment, we're Grand Prix winners for the first time.

22:22Zing Tsjeng:And success gets you noticed. Just after becoming executive director at Williams, he got a call from Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes had entered Formula One a few years earlier, but Daimler wanted to know why they weren't doing very well. Toto told them they needed to spend more money. Mercedes was spending less than Williams. And you've got to remember, mainly Formula One is a competition between two teams of engineers. And whoever's got the best engineers, 10's winning. I would say 95 % of success is having the fastest car. The other 5 % is having the best driver. And they will still say it's still worth paying tens of millions to a really good driver because that extra 0.1 of a second on a lap can make the difference between winning and losing.

23:09Zing Tsjeng:So spending money, this is a mind-bogglingly expensive sport to get into.

23:14Simon Jack:I mean, you only need to look at the number of people in the pit crew to know how much money you're spending on every single one of those top quality people in the pit.

23:22Zing Tsjeng:That's why they need so many sponsors. So all the drivers are actually plastered with sponsorship, aren't they?

23:26Simon Jack:Well, they needed money to do all this stuff. And by this point, Toto had a lot of it. He became an owner of the Mercedes Formula One team, buying a 30 % stake, which Forbes estimated cost him$50 million. And at the same time, they offered him a job. So within months of joining Williams, Toto then moved on to Mercedes, becoming their executive director. Bad news for Williams. Toto was hesitant about the offer at first. He said, I gave my heart to Williams. I was really struggling with the decision.

23:54Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, Toto, though, joined Mercedes around the same time as Nicky Lauda, a legendary racing driver, almost died, as we've already said. Nicky Lauda became non-executive chairman and a co-owner with a 10 % stake. So he's rubbing shoulders with his old friend there. Toto took charge of the commercial side, while ex-McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe took over the technical operation. And together, this team reshaped Mercedes. This was a new collaborative management style. According to Toto, he said, that position of team principal is a thing of the past. It's like any other major corporation.

24:28Zing Tsjeng:There is not that one guy on the board who's making all the decisions. It's divided by competency. However, since joining, he's widely been called team principal and holds the CEO title. He may think that that model is dead, but there's no one who embodies it more obviously than Toto Wolff himself.

24:44Simon Jack:Absolutely not. And if you watch Drive to Survive, that is very obvious. He is very much the guy in charge. Well, at the point that Toto joined Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton was already the driver alongside Nico Rosberg. And they say a Formula One driver's biggest competition is his teammate. And that was absolutely true with Lewis and Nico. in 2016 on the last lap of the Austrian Grand Prix. Lewis and Nico collided due to competitive driving and that cost Mercedes first and second place.

25:12Zing Tsjeng:Well, that is a kind of real no-no. And it's a really interesting thing about Formula One because some team principals will say, we've essentially got team orders. You go first and you go second and they'll sort of plan that in advance. Other teams will say, the people here want to see the two people in the best car race each other. That's what it's all about. So there's always been this kind of dance. And the spectators don't like Team Order because it all feels like it's been planned. They want to see people racing against each other.

25:38Simon Jack:They want to see real competition. And actually a really good fictional portrayal of this sort of rivalry can be found in the Brad Pitt movie F1. I haven't seen that. Is it any good? It is actually. And I say this as someone who, as we've established, doesn't even know how to drive. It is a great movie. It's sort of a bit like Top Gun, but in cars.

25:55Zing Tsjeng:OK, OK, there we go. Recommendation there. Anyway, after they knock each other out, Toto felt he had to show the organisation that I wouldn't allow that behaviour anymore. After the race, he made both drivers visit the engineers, telling them, look at everyone here in the room. Imagine everyone back at home and their families and realise how you're making us look. Toto said he used some harsh words I cannot repeat. I said, don't challenge me on this. You don't want to find out what I'm capable of. Menacing.

26:20Simon Jack:Well, after this, the relationship between Toto and Lewis Hamilton was understandably frosty. But that Christmas, Toto hosted a party at his home in Oxfordshire. In the kitchen, he cornered Lewis and told him, even though Susie and I might disagree about something, it would never come into my mind to divorce. And it's the same with you, Lewis. I don't want a divorce. You're the best driver. They spent five hours talking it out. And by the end, Toto said their relationship had gone from purely business to a friendship.

26:47Zing Tsjeng:Worth talking these things out, definitely.

26:49Simon Jack:Under Toto's leadership and with Lewis behind the wheel, Mercedes became an unstoppable force. Between 2014 and 2021, they took home the Constructors' Championship eight years in a row. That is the record for the most number of consecutive wins. And Lewis took home the Drivers' Championship seven years in a row, which means he jointly holds a record with Michael Schumacher. And with every win, by the way, Mercedes was also earning millions in prize money because this is also a very, very financially incentivised sport. In 2020, the team earned over$70 million.

27:21Zing Tsjeng:I'd be very surprised if$70 million covered their costs for that season. And worth saying that you talked about the Constructors' Championship is very important. For car manufacturers, it's a shop window of engineering prestige because actually some of the technology that gets developed on Formula 1 makes it into road cars eventually.

27:37Simon Jack:It is a huge commercial saying, well, you can't quite make Formula 1, but you can drive one of our cars for consumers.

27:43Zing Tsjeng:And as Mercedes' success grew, so did Toto's reputation. He's steering them to win after win after win. It's worth taking a moment to describe an F1 season. The whole shebang, this caravan of parts and people moves every week from country to country. It's a bit like a touring engineering circus. Toto says he'll fly around 600 hours during the racing season and can spend 300 nights out of the year in hotels.

28:09Simon Jack:So team principals are in fierce competition, but they also spend so much of their time together. It's sort of like a weird bunker mentality. They're also constantly interviewed by the press about each other. Toto has said it's an alpha male thing. You want to beat the other guy.

28:24Zing Tsjeng:For years, Toto's arch rival was Red Bull Racing's then team principal Christian Horner. In 2021, Toto sent an all-star email from the engineers to the cooks that they should find their opposite number at Red Bull and look at them every day, put the picture right in front of you so you know whom to beat. What are the cooks saying? I've got to make a better egg.

28:44Simon Jack:Well, Christian Horner has said that Toto is, in his words, a tax evader in Monaco who runs his team from a distance and someone very driven by the balance sheet and a control freak. In response, Toto said his statements no longer trigger any emotions in me because it shoots in all the directions. Toto, in fact, has compared Christian to a yapping terrier dog. Oh, ouch. I can't imagine Christian Horner was very happy about that.

29:09Zing Tsjeng:But it is true that Toto is the only team principal who's also a significant co-owner of the team. But Toto insists I would give up every single penny of the profits to win. He does admit to having a desire for control. He likes to stay in the same hotel room for each race and be picked up by the same driver in the same car wherever he lands. And he always eats grilled chicken and vegetables for lunch and dinner, preferably alone when travelling.

29:35Simon Jack:Did he mention if there was any seasoning at all on the chicken and veg? He didn't, but I suspect not much. I suspect salt and pepper only. Yeah. And even then, at a push. Well, let's get back to the money, because some big changes at Formula One were about to help Total's journey to a billion. In 2017, Liberty Media bought Formula One for approximately$8 billion, and in the process, finally pushing Formula One's owner, Bernie Eccleston, out. You can listen to our episode on Bernie for the full story there. Now, this deal was the start of a new era for the sport that had been declining in popularity.

30:09Simon Jack:Yeah, that's right.

30:09Zing Tsjeng:After the Bernie Eccleston years, because Bernie Eccleston turned it from a pretty marginal sport into this world beating. Every country wanted to have a Grand Prix. It was kind of international prestige.

30:19Simon Jack:It was sexy. It was glamorous.

30:20Zing Tsjeng:It was glamorous, but it had begun to just sort of plateau or decline in popularity. but then its profile was about to get a boost because in 2019 Netflix released Drive to Survive a documentary following the teams each race season and it brought a new young and female audience to sport because it reframed Formula One from a technical sport into more of a human drama. The show proved so popular it drew record crowds to races, more races were added to the schedule including Miami and Las Vegas.

30:49Simon Jack:Toto has compared the show, this is interesting, to keeping up with the Kardashians. And if that's the case, then Toto probably is Kim. He is the breakout star. You know, like Kim, he's got big main character energy. His wife Susie is also regularly featured on the show. She actually was made the brand ambassador of Mercedes in 2016. And if you watch Drive to Survive, it does sometimes feel more like a reality show

31:12Zing Tsjeng:than straight documentary. In 2021, Formula One introduced a cost cap which limited the amount of money a team can spend during a calendar year to$145 million. I told you it was more than$70 million that they won in that season. And that's quite interesting because up to that point, the bigger the company, the more they could spend, you've got a massive advantage.

31:33Simon Jack:The more money you can throw at it, the better.

31:34Zing Tsjeng:It's a bit like what's happened in football where Real Madrid just seem to be able to spend whatever they want and therefore they win the Spanish League every year, apart from Barcelona when they win, of course. Anyway, meanwhile, Red Bull's young teammate, a guy called Max Verstappen, was proving himself to be a once-in-a-generation driver. and after a competitive and divisive season Max clinched the championship from Lewis at the final race in Abu Dhabi after a very controversial call by the then race director Michael Massey it's too complicated to go into but basically Lewis Hamilton was miles in the lead and then there was an incident when they slow all the cars down and they bring on a safety car which kind of keeps everyone in the same position and then safety car goes off and they start racing again a poor decision says everyone and it denied Lewis Hamilton a record-breaking eighth world championship title.

32:24Zing Tsjeng:And it was later deemed human error by the FIA, the governing body. And Toto said the best man that day didn't win and it's still something that stings. Live your Lewis Hamilton. That's probably one of the biggest disappointments of your entire life.

32:35Simon Jack:And you can actually watch Toto's reaction from Drive to Survive on YouTube. There's actually a very viral clip where he kind of absolutely loses it and starts shouting at Michael over the headphones and saying, you know, Michael, this isn't right. It isn't right.

32:49Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, that was a huge controversy, actually.

32:52Simon Jack:And this brought an end to Mercedes's winning streak with Christian Horner's Red Bull taking the lead for the next few seasons. And that meant less prize money for Toto. But that didn't really matter because of the increase in popularity of the sport overall, because more eyeballs on Formula One meant more sponsorship money.

33:08Zing Tsjeng:Mercedes main sponsor is Petronas, which is Malaysia's national state-owned oil and gas company. They're also sponsored by Ineos, which is a petrochemicals company founded by one of our other billionaires, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Ineos bought into the team in 2020. They are one-third equal shareholders with Daimler and Toto Wolff himself. And there are 20 other sponsor brands. There's so many of them. One of the first things you notice about Formula One, if you're new to the sport, is the amount of advertising that is on trackside, on the driver's clothing on the cars there isn't a spare inch on anything that hasn't got some global logo on it

33:45Simon Jack:because it's a big global sport and there have been you know there is some criticism that formula one and racing in general is sort of a means for these companies some of whom can be quite controversial like petrochemical companies to essentially sports wash their reputation yeah

33:59Zing Tsjeng:and if you remember what happened during the qatar world cup there was a lot of talk about sports washing then which is saying that you know in countries which have questionable human rights records for example that the awarding of major sporting events to them helps them bolster their global prestige in a way that some people feel uncomfortable with the same accusation has been leveled at formula one formula one has always maintained that bringing the sport to these regions opens them up to the world and forces engagement on critical issues but lots of countries as a way of putting themselves on the map just like the olympics or the world cup they want a Formula One race.

34:36Zing Tsjeng:So these issues emerge.

34:38Simon Jack:But the difference is, is that once you get a Formula One race, you're usually hosting that Formula One race for a long time, unlike the Olympics.

34:44Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. And what's also interesting about it is that there was a time when Formula One was seen as literally the kind of apogee, the zenith of sort of gas guzzling petrol cars. And if you think about the emissions, not only on the cars around the track, but moving the entire shebang from country to country. That became a big issue. They started like an E series where they had electric cars rather than these highly tuned petrol cars. Like all green stuff, it seems to have fallen slightly further down the agenda. Who knows what that is?

35:17Simon Jack:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I also feel like with drivers like Lewis Hamilton, who kind of represent this kind of new multicultural generation of young drivers, there is a sense where, you know, the PR image of Formula one has slightly changed, become more progressive. So it's allowed some things like the environmental impact to be slightly glossed over.

35:36Zing Tsjeng:Maybe, maybe. What's going to be very interesting is that if you talk to the engineers, they'll say that the drivers are only a small part of it. It may not be long before we have, I don't know, meta versus open AI or whatever. It'll be two artificial intelligence racing against each other. We'll take out the humans completely. It wouldn't be a very good TV series though, would it?

35:54Simon Jack:No, it wouldn't. You can't really have Total Wolf shouting at an AI in the same way you can have him shouting at Lewis Hamilton.

36:01Zing Tsjeng:Anyway, let's get back to why we're here, which is the money.

36:03Simon Jack:By 2023, Mercedes Formula One's value was estimated at$3.8 billion. That's a 274 % rise from 2019. And this made it the second most valuable team in the sport behind Ferrari, which, you know, occupies that top spot due to a long established heritage. It's also worth noting at this point that Williams had the lowest valuation at$725 million. So it's actually a pretty good move by Toto to jump ship. Interestingly, Forbes actually credits the increase in value largely to the rule changes that reduced spending, thereby forcing teams to become more profitable.

36:39Zing Tsjeng:Because the temptation would have been to spend every last penny on trying to win. When that is capped, you become more profitable. So I find that very interesting. And let's not forget, of course, the important bit about this is that Toto owns a third of the team. So in 2023, Forbes estimated he had become a billionaire worth$1.6 billion.

37:12Toto Wolff:Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along. which is why you should try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. Its powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, ZipRecruiter finds you what you're looking for.

37:47Toto Wolff:The needle in the haystack. See why 4 out of 5 employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free at ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor. In Our Man in Moscow, I'll show you what it's like being a news correspondent in Russia as the Russian authorities wage war on Ukraine and try to silence dissent.

38:22Simon Jack:The sound of war has reverberated around Ukraine for three years.

38:26Toto Wolff:Dramatic geopolitical upheaval alongside threats of intimidation and imprisonment. Our Man in Moscow. Watch with a subscription to bbc.com and the BBC app. Visit bbc.com slash docs to learn more. Ever wonder why we make the choices we do and how to make smarter ones? Introducing Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join Wharton professor Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change, as she shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes.

39:11Toto Wolff:Each episode covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self-control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen.

39:38Zing Tsjeng:It's time to score Toto on our billionaire categories. This is the bit of the pod where we basically look at a few categories like wealth, controversy, philanthropy, the parent legacy they leave behind and score them for fun between zero to 10. And we always start with wealth because that's kind of why we're here. What do you reckon?

39:56Simon Jack:Well, at the start of 2024, Toto signed a three year deal to stay on as team principal and CEO of Mercedes Formula One. but just a few weeks later Lewis Hamilton announced that he would be moving to Ferrari once the season was over. Talk about drama and this was right at the start of the season so they had a whole year working together knowing that this was going to happen.

40:17Zing Tsjeng:Hard to do in a very pressured situation knowing that you've basically got divorced and you've got a whole year to live together. Makes for awkward water cooler chat.

40:25Simon Jack:It does. Lewis leaving Mercedes hasn't actually put much of a dent in Toto's overall wealth. He's currently worth two and a half billion dollars according to Forbes. And, you know, he did find success in a sport where the barrier to entry is millions of dollars high.

40:40Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, he was in a posh school, but he was almost almost had to leave because his school fees weren't paid. But his grandparents did step in to pay for him.

40:47Simon Jack:Yeah, but he does come from quite a difficult background. You know, his father died. It's not exactly a smooth sailing road for Toto Wolff.

40:54Zing Tsjeng:No. And we also look at how they spend it. He travels between races in a private jet, of course. He clocks up 800 hours in the air last year. And to be fair, he's probably right when he said it's impossible to do what I do without the plane.

41:08Simon Jack:Yeah, you wouldn't catch him in economy class, would you?

41:10Zing Tsjeng:No, or even on commercial, I think it would be hard to do. So on wealth, two and a half billion, it's not top of the tree by our standards. So I'm going to give him a three out of 10 for wealth.

41:22Simon Jack:I feel like I have to score him slightly higher because talk about glamorous, sexy ways to make your money. I mean, Formula One racing is it. So I would say four out of 10, although I do slightly worry that there are some investment bankers listening to this podcast thinking, if Total Wolf could drive cars for a living, maybe I could do it. Guys, maybe don't think about quitting your day job.

41:42Zing Tsjeng:Well, yeah, remember, he got a very lucky escape from a life-threatening crash. Three for me, four for you. Controversy.

41:49Simon Jack:He does occupy that very unique role as both team principal and co-owner. So, you know, There are critics who argue he's got an outsized influence in the way Formula One runs.

41:59Zing Tsjeng:But you need these characters, don't you? Every sport needs them, like a kind of high-profile manager like an Alex Ferguson. You know, you need people who generate headlines, create drama. And that's one part of controversy, just like is he a controversial character and the way he runs things. There is, of course, controversy about, you know, environmental impact, sports washing that we've already discussed. Some people will say it is a carbon spewing carnival which cavorts around the world in a most damaging way. Other people think it's like really cool. So it's controversial in itself.

42:30Simon Jack:I find this personally quite fascinating. Formula One has the goal to become net zero by 2030. Not sure how well they're doing on that, but Toto argues that Formula One can show a blueprint for travel and transport by getting the smallest possible footprint.

42:45Zing Tsjeng:I mean, it is worth remembering the emissions from the cars themselves are less than 1 % of the sport's total footprint. Moving that circus around the world is most of it. So hard pushed to say that Formula One is some kind of pioneer in reducing carbon emissions as a sport.

43:02Simon Jack:Well, you would hope that the whole travelling circus doesn't all fly by private jet.

43:06Zing Tsjeng:And remember another thing, criticism that Christian Horner made of him. He manages from a distance. He's a tax exile in Monaco. not the first rich guy to end up being tax resident in Monaco, where they have no income tax, by the way.

43:17Simon Jack:So it's nothing illegal, but it is, you know, controversial. Especially because the Mercedes team officers are actually in the UK. And he said in the past, he lives in Oxford for work and travels back home on the weekends.

43:29Zing Tsjeng:Okay, add all that up and give him a controversy score of?

43:33Simon Jack:Oh, I would say not that high, to be honest. When you look at what he's done, he doesn't seem to have screwed anyone over personally in his rise to a billion dollars. And I don't know if this is maybe the way Drive to Survive puts it, but most of the team seemed to respect him. You know, Christian Horner, while he was still at Red Bull, grudgingly respected him. I would say three out of ten.

43:55Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, I agree with you. Three out of ten. Philanthropy. What's the giving record like?

44:00Simon Jack:Well, he's on the board of a foundation called the Mary Bendit Foundation. That's a charity that helps disadvantaged children, which was founded in the memory of one of his childhood friends.

44:09Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, Toto and his uncle have also paid fees for students at his former school who weren't able to afford it. Remember that, his own incident, he said, so that no child would end up in the situation my sister and I had.

44:20Simon Jack:And also him and Lewis Hamilton, who is, by the way, still the first and only black driver in Formula One history, they launched a charitable initiative called Ignite to support greater diversity and inclusion in motorsport. But when it comes to big donations from Toto himself, he is sadly lacking.

44:37Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, we can't find any public record of big personal donations unless, of course, he's done it in secret. Toto, you've got our email address if you want to let us know. So I'm going to give him a one question mark.

44:48Simon Jack:A one question mark. I like that.

44:50Zing Tsjeng:I'll give him a one question mark too. Paran Legacy, I mean, clearly he's enormously powerful within the sport. He's helped shape the future of Formula One. I mean, he's also a celebrity. They set records at Mercedes together, didn't they? Him and Lewis Hamilton. So in terms of legacy, in terms of the annals of the sport, I think he will always be seen as the Alex Ferguson to Lewis Hamilton's David Beckham or something like that. And the ruler of a very successful dynasty. But they don't last forever. Williams once was a big dynasty, then it wasn't. You know, these things come and go. So I'm not sure how much legacy he will have.

45:27Zing Tsjeng:You know, some rich guy enjoys Formula One.

45:31Simon Jack:Stop presses.

45:32Zing Tsjeng:Stop press. Yes, I'm going to give him a four for Paranagosy. I think he'll be remembered as a great character of the sport.

45:38Simon Jack:I think I'm going to score him slightly higher, only because I think I've been somewhat radicalised on this by the comments that people leave on videos of him on YouTube. Oh, yeah? If you look at the way people respond to his character, it's almost like he's become a meme. Yeah. So I think for that, I'll have to give him maybe a six out of ten.

45:56Zing Tsjeng:Okay, fair enough. Six for you, four for me. So is he good, bad, or just another billionaire? there. What do you think of Toto Wolff? Email us.

46:03Simon Jack:And if you want to also voice note us your best Toto Wolff impression, please feel free to go ahead.

46:08Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, got to be better than mine.

46:09Simon Jack:And thank you, Davey from Brunei and Ian from Leonsi for suggesting Toto. He is a real character.

46:14Zing Tsjeng:No, great suggestion. Thanks for that.

46:17Simon Jack:A listener has been in touch to say, hello, Zing and Simon, Emmanuel, all the way from Kenya. And I'm a really, really big fan of your podcast. Thanks for listening, Emmanuel. I've been following this podcast from the very beginning, and I love the show. Mostly listening when doing house chores and walking to work. Currently just listened to Hetty Green and she should be regarded as the Queen of Wall Street and accorded the same respect as Warren Buffett. I agree. My favourite though was Chuck Feeney who made money and gave it all out. I aspire to do the same, make money to help people and not hoard it all to myself.

46:47Simon Jack:Watch out for me if good bad billionaire is still on air. I think we should do a running tally of the number of people who've assured us they're going to end up on the show.

46:55Zing Tsjeng:Well, good luck with that one, Emmanuel. thanks for getting in touch and kama emailed with a similar ambition she says honestly i'm in love with your podcast thank you you guys are doing a great job every single time i listen to an episode while commuting to school and work i'm left super inspired your podcast cultivates the spirit ambition to become anyone i want to be and to become someone bigger and more powerful despite my background i've heard countless stories of people going from rags to riches people such as oprah and how they worked harder than the average person knocking on every single door and pulling luck onto their side.

47:28Zing Tsjeng:I hope this podcast lives on for the next 10 to 15 years to witness me featured on it. Coming from the streets of Tanzania in Africa, I believe I can do just as the rest of your featured billionaires have. I'm going to work harder than any human being fuelled by inspiration from your show. Please keep on inspiring us. Well, gosh, good luck, Kema. Thank you for getting in touch. We hope you get there too. We hope we're on for another 10 to 15 years. The amount of new billionaires being created, we've got a 50-50 chance.

47:55Simon Jack:I would say even higher maybe maybe higher so we're actually going to take a break for a few weeks but we will be

48:03Zing Tsjeng:back with even more billionaires in the meantime we have over 80 episodes exploring the lives of the super rich from celebrities to ceos and thank you for your suggestions of billionaires for us to cover too we do read them and some of them may well turn up in our next season

48:18Simon Jack:now if you want to get in touch email goodbadbillionaire at bbc.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001 917 686 1176 to tell us what you think. And yes, we will be back with more billionaires, both good and bad, later in the year. So make sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening to this to get new episodes as soon as they drop.

48:39Zing Tsjeng:Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The researcher is Maria Noyan. The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production.

48:48Simon Jack:For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning editor is John Manel.

49:03Toto Wolff:Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip. ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. Its powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of hay, ZipRecruiter finds you what you're looking for.

49:38Toto Wolff:The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free at ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. ZipRecruiter.com slash zip.