Toto Wolff demands rivals stop ‘badmouthing’ F1 in seven-minute rant | F1 | Sport

Toto Wolff spent seven minutes of a media session on Monday imploring rivals to stop criticising Formula 1 in public and asking them to “understand our responsibility as the guardians of this sport”. His plea came on the same day that the sport’s key stakeholders met to decide what changes to the new regulations are needed.

Several meetings have been held in this gap between races with driver safety high on the agenda after Oliver Bearman‘s high-speed crash at the Japanese Grand Prix last month. He lost control while trying to avoid a collision with another car ahead which was moving much slower on the approach to a corner, prompting several drivers to say they had been warning the FIA that such an incident was likely with these new cars which rely much more on power from an electric battery than before.

There has also been plenty of talk over the entertainment factor as well as the driveability of the cars, with many drivers voicing their dislike for the new cars, while some have dismissed the increased number of overtakes as being “artificial”. Most complaints have come from drivers who are further down the competitive order, such as Max Verstappen, while strong starters Mercedes have made few, if any, public complaints about the rules.

In a lengthy plea on Monday, during a video call with Express Sport and other F1 media, Mercedes team principal Wolff made it clear to other stakeholders that they shouldn’t use this opportunity to change the rules for personal performance gain. “I need a little bit of a longer answer to this,” the Austrian began when he was asked if he truly believes everyone with a vote will act in the best interests of the sport without any gamesmanship.

He then added 806 more words as he spoke without interruption for seven minutes to drive home his point. Wolff said: “We all – drivers, the FIA, Formula 1 and the teams – need to understand our responsibility as the guardians of this sport. And we need to respect what the sport has done for us and work constructively among ourselves to improve where things need to be improved and safeguard when it’s needed.

“We all have our opinions, and that’s absolutely legitimate, but these opinions and discussions should happen among the stakeholders more than in the public eye. Because the sport is in a great place: We have many hundreds of thousands of fans that love the sport. There are others that don’t love certain aspects of the sport but, in order to protect all of this huge opportunity that the sport gives us, we shouldn’t badmouth our own sport in public.

“And we’ve all fallen foul of this in the past because of gamesmanship or because of trying to protect a situation or improve a regulatory situation. But we need to be very careful because the things we say in public, they may not have an immediate repercussion on how the fans perceive the sport, but that comes with a lag. And that is the responsibility we have.

“Of course, everybody is entitled to have an opinion. But I think we owe it to ourselves to express that opinion in the stakeholder groups. Now, this has happened in the last few weeks in a constructive way. We have set our objectives in the way that we want to improve, where we believe it improves. We want to look after the safety of the drivers. We want to protect what we see in racing. We act upon data: What do fans love and what do they not love? And we respect also the hardcore motorsport fans that have loved what we had before.

“But there’s also a certain degree of nostalgia that makes the past much better than the present. I mean, people talk greatly about the 2000 years and maybe forget that there were years where there wasn’t a single overtake in a race. It was maybe great for the drivers, because it was flat out through the corners, but if the product is boring for spectators, then we don’t gain.

“And we had many years where the product was criticised and we acted erratically in changes and they weren’t any better either. So I think we are in a very privileged situation today that we have a great sport and we all have a responsibility to carry that.”

Wolff then turned specifically to the Bearman incident, pointing out that the Haas driver’s own error of pushing the boost button at the wrong time had been a contributory factor to the crash. He also compared the situation to the World Endurance Championship and to racing at the fearsome Nurburgring Nordschleife, where cars with vastly different performance regularly share the track but the danger of that is accepted – even in the wake of the death of a driver at the latter circuit at the weekend.

Wolff continued: “At the same time, we need to see the Bearman accident for what it was. It was a misjudgment of a situation. It’s like pushing the boost button and not braking on a kink where you’re supposed to brake. And whilst we need to protect the safety of the drivers, and this needs to be of utmost priority and importance, there’s plenty of brilliant racing happening in the world that we as racers love.

“I love Le Mans. I’m sitting overnight watching the timing screen, but the hypercars go through the Porsche curves 30 or 40 kilometres faster than the GT3 cars. The speed differences are enormous. We have seen critical situations, massive accidents between those different two classes.

“I remember I was awake all night when [Mike] Rockenfeller crashed against the GT car in the night, because it was a misjudgment. I remember Allan McNish having a spectacular off with a GT3 car. I remember an accident a year or two ago in the Porsche Curves because of a misjudgment of one of the drivers. And we still love it, and this series exists with all of that.

“We look at Nordschleife. I don’t know who of you looked at that and obviously we had a tragic event, but one of the fascinations of Nordschleife is that a works GT3 car races a private Volkswagen Polo with amateur drivers, in the night, in the rain, over crests where you don’t know what to expect on the other side. And even the best racers in Formula 1 in our world love that sport with all the dangers it brings with it. When you look at WEC in Imola this weekend, the lap time differences between the prototypes and the GT cars were more than 10 seconds.

“Let’s concentrate on those two priorities that I mentioned before and make it better and safer. Will it be always the safest sport? It won’t. It’s about understanding what those systems do to the car, how we can reduce the risks in particular situations like in the rain or whatever, but always reminding ourselves we are guardians of the sport, we have responsibility for the sport and the opportunity it has given to all of us, rather than looking at the personal advantage or disadvantage of certain regulations being changed or not.”