Toto Wolff

Speaker 30:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the Formula One executive Toto Wolf. He's the CEO, co-owner and team principal at Mercedes, where he's been at the helm for a decade. Under his leadership, they've won an unprecedented seven consecutive drivers' championships, six with Lewis Hamilton, and eight consecutive Constructors' Championships. This makes him the most successful manager in Formula One history. Some say in any sport. He was born in Vienna in 1972 and fell in love with motor racing when he was 17. As he puts it, I found my identity. When his own career on the grid didn't work out, he turned his attention to business and made a fortune as an entrepreneur. By the early 2000s, he was back racing again, this time as a hobby. A decade later, he bought a stake in his first Formula One team. The road to success hasn't always been a smooth one. When he was just 15, he lost his father to cancer. In 2009, he was lucky to escape with his own life when the car he was racing crashed at 189 miles per hour. In 2021, his team's spectacular winning streak came to a controversial end in Abu Dhabi. But he says, how you cope and behave in moments of failure is, in my opinion, the way you see right into the soul of somebody. Toto Wolf, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Toto Wolff2:02

Thank you for having me.

Presenter2:04

Toto time and again in the articles that I've read about your leadership style, the word perfectionist is used. How accurate is that description?

Toto Wolff2:13

I think that there is no such thing as ever achieving perfection. It's a pursuit knowing that you're never going to get there. But I think it's within my character that I always try to do the things as good as I can, you know, have an eye for the detail. And that has been part of me since I'm very young.

Toto Wolff2:34

People may say that I'm a control freak and I would say that I agree to it, but then also like perfection, there is no such thing as total control.

Presenter2:41

And when it comes to your own routines when you're on the road, you try and cut down, eliminate decision making and fuss. How does that work in your own routine?

Toto Wolff2:51

For me it is really reducing trivial things like I'm wearing the same clothes, I'm eating the same food, even to the point that my assistants booked the same hotel room for me.

Presenter3:00

Wow, okay.

Toto Wolff3:01

Every single year.

Presenter3:02

And the same food what's on the menu, then?

Toto Wolff3:04

The same dark bread is a pumpunicle with butter and uh and some ham, a small cappuccino, because I I take half a cappuccino because I want to have another half an hour later, and then it's chicken breast with the tomato salad, and I have the same for dinner also.

Presenter3:19

You have said about your attitude to winning, that actually even though you are incredibly competitive, you don't want to win at any cost. You want to win in the right way. What do you mean by that?

Toto Wolff3:30

in a day and age where there's so much terrible things happening because of a lack of integrity or honesty or just a lack of humility, I think this is going totally against our values in the team.

Presenter3:41

Yeah.

Toto Wolff3:41

And that's why I'd rather lose a championship than cheat.

Presenter3:44

It's time for your first disc. What have you chosen and why are you taking it with you today?

Toto Wolff3:49

I love Massive Attack and Unfinished Sympathy was the first song that I came across when I was starting my own racing in my late teens. There was long journeys in the car in the night to the tracks and back, going fast on the German Autobahn. There were no limits there and it was very motivational for me. It brought me in the right frame of mind to go racing so I could listen to it in a constant loop.

Speaker 34:18

Uh

Speaker 34:19

Be with you

Toto Wolff4:27

Can you have

Speaker 14:28

Uh

Toto Wolff4:28

A deal without a night

Speaker 14:31

Gonna put that okay

Speaker 14:35

And now I've got to know more

Presenter4:42

Massive attack and unfinished sympathy. Todder Wolf, you were born Todja Wolf in Vienna. Your mother, Joanna, is Polish and worked as an anaesthetist. Your father, Sven, was Romanian, and he ran his own transport business. You've described him as your hero. What was special about him?

Toto Wolff4:58

I think as a father what I remember is that he was a very loving father when I was a small child. But there is a lot of memory that I've put together in a way later because my father became very ill when I was very young and that was a sufferance in the family and for myself because your father needs to be there to be loved, to be hated, to fight with and none of that was there for me anymore.

Presenter5:21

He was diagnosed, I think, when you were eight with a brain tumor. How much do you remember about what happened between then and he died when you were fifteen, I think.

Toto Wolff5:30

Yeah, it got worse because obviously he was incapacitated to work, so the company went down and from then on it was a literally every angle of life was a struggle.

Presenter5:41

Did you understand what was happening as a little boy?

Toto Wolff5:43

No, I didn't. I just saw it. You know, a father that becomes angry for no reason. I remember model cars being thrown on the floor and these things and that is not at all the character that he was. It's just you have no chance when that thing is in your brain. But I saw how he was fighting that and how he tried to be the best possible him. But what I remember is that from this early age it's almost like I took over within the family that I had to look after my sister and my mother and to look after him and we had these weekends with him because my parents divorced afterwards and it was me trying to make sure that he's in a good space.

Speaker 15:54

It's

Presenter6:16

So their relationship didn't survive what he was going through.

Toto Wolff6:19

And no, the relationship didn't survive also because of the financial hardship that we had.

Presenter6:23

Your family life had been quite affluent. You were going to a very good school, living in a nice area. How much did things change?

Toto Wolff6:31

They changed overnight. I think from a nice house in an African area, suddenly your parents don't live together anymore. We went into a small apartment. There were moments where my sister and I had to leave school in the afternoon because the tuition fees were not paid. So how do you explain to your friends that you have to pack your bags and go home? How do you explain that to your 10-year-old sister in the tram? And I have these moments in my mind so strongly, it's like an imprint.

Presenter6:57

And you stayed with your mother. You were fifteen when your dad died. She kept the family going, but it must have been extremely difficult for all of you. How would you describe your relationship with her?

Toto Wolff7:08

My mother was looking after us financially, but the rest, I guess, I managed. She had to live early as a doctor. You know, you have to be in the hospital at 7 o'clock. She came back late. She had to have her own life with her partner, who is still her partner today, so after 40 years, but she had to live her life and in a way I understood. So it was me running the household.

Speaker 17:23

Yeah.

Presenter7:23

Who's all?

Presenter7:29

Yeah.

Presenter7:31

How has what you experienced shaped you as a person, do you think?

Toto Wolff7:35

You don't wish any child or adolescent to such a situation. But it has shaped me in a way that my determination is strong and my resilience levels are high. You know, when we don't perform in Formula One, that doesn't even move the needle for me. This is so far away from sufferance or from pain that I just have to make sure that everybody around me can go through this in a, let's say, most stable way. But for me, you know, if you've been in a mentally in a Siberian gulag, it's not going to affect you anymore to be in, you know, living in a normal world.

Presenter8:14

Toto, it's time to go to your second track today. Tell us what we're going to hear next and why.

Toto Wolff8:19

I've chosen Mama from Genesis.

Toto Wolff8:22

The background of the song is about a young man and probably a sex worker and he just starves for her attention and it's something that I can relate to, not to the sex worker, but for me personally the title Mama is where my mother had to be a bit remote to protect herself and I can relate to that feeling that you're not getting emotionally what you feel you need or want. It's a total love deprivation in a way. But not done on purpose. It doesn't kind of match.

Speaker 19:05

Bye bye.

Speaker 19:07

And how do we

Speaker 19:11

Yeah.

Presenter9:11

And it's a fetish entity.

Presenter9:14

She's a war weather.

Presenter9:17

All I just can keep going.

Presenter9:23

In the heat, in the steam of the city.

Presenter9:28

I always got nobody and the children blue.

Presenter9:33

Genesis. Mama. Toto Wolf, you discovered motorsports later than many of your colleagues in that world do. People tend to start very, very young. You were actually seventeen. Tell me about that day.

Toto Wolff9:45

We were invited by a friend to watch Imracing in Formula three, which is a junior series. I ended up on the track and then walking onto the grid and this is where just this massive explosion within me and it was clear this is what I wanted to do.

Presenter9:59

What was it that captured you in that moment?

Toto Wolff10:02

It's controlling the uncontrollable, being able to ride that wild horse and trying to be in control. That is the fascinating thing that caught me in racing.

Presenter10:14

And that was it. Your compass was set. You passed your own driving test shortly afterwards. But am I right in thinking that you weren't a natural in the beginning? Did you pass first time?

Toto Wolff10:22

No, second time. It was a huge embarrassment because I I was still in school and I remember leaving a lunch break to do the driving test and then I came back at two o'clock and they were all my friends were standing out of class and

Toto Wolff10:35

No, failed it. And I remember that the driving teacher told me, you and cars, that's not going to be very good.

Presenter10:45

Well at least that turned out to be wrong.

Toto Wolff10:47

Yeah.

Presenter10:48

In nineteen ninety four, you won your category in the Nürburgring Twenty four Hours race. There's one particular part of the track, the Nordschleifer, the the North Loop, on the Nürburgring. What's so special about that?

Toto Wolff11:00

It's a more than twenty kilometer long track. You're driving through the forest. The climate can change. You have three kilometers of dry weather and then suddenly you're driving to a rain wall. Truth to be told, there's still until today many people dying there every year because it's just so fast. And that for a racing driver back in the day had also an attraction.

Presenter11:20

A career as a driver didn't work out for you. Why not? What went wrong?

Toto Wolff11:24

In 1994, when I was actually at the peak of my junior career, Ayaton Sena died. And two days earlier, an Austrian driver called Roland Gratzenberger. And then the following weekend in the Monaco Grand Prix, another Austrian got very, very injured. And my sponsor, who in a way looked after all of us, said, I can't do that anymore. And that was the killer for me. I knew that without his support, financial support, it wouldn't go. And it was very difficult because I went into an internship in a bank, worked in a bank in Warsaw. My mother is Polish. And I remember it was so bad. It was a hot summer. The friends were either on holiday or racing cars. And I was working in there and at lunchtime sometimes cried my eyes out in the toilet of the office.

Speaker 112:08

Yeah.

Toto Wolff12:09

But I had to push through and it felt right. I started to

Toto Wolff12:13

learn about banking investment banking and the markets. And the next dream started and it was being successful as an investment banker, successful as an investor, and it became all encompassing.

Presenter12:27

Well, I want to find out exactly what happened next in a moment, but first we've got to make some room for the music. Your third choice, if you wouldn't mind, Toto Wolf, what are we going to hear?

Toto Wolff12:36

So that is money can't buy it from any Linux. For a long time in my life I thought money can buy it. But just more and more and more money doesn't make more and more happy.

Presenter12:46

It's not a motivator for you to day, then, is it?

Toto Wolff12:49

It's still a KPI for me, you know, like the lap time stopwatch is a performance indicator. Financial success is too, but I'm not expecting from it continuous lasting happiness. True happiness comes of the relationship with my wife and the family and then of course we are living a good life and get to enjoy certain things, but it's more her presence that makes me happy than the environment.

Toto Wolff13:15

I'm only getting by it Uh

Toto Wolff13:17

Uh

Speaker 113:18

Baby Bay

Speaker 113:20

Sex can buy it

Speaker 113:23

Baby

Speaker 113:26

Drugs stand by it

Presenter13:32

You can fight it.

Speaker 113:34

BAY

Presenter13:45

Money can't buy it, Annie Lennox. TotoWolf, you set up a venture capital company with a friend and enjoyed enormous success investing in new tech companies so you could afford to return to motor racing as a driver, this time as a hobby. In 2009, you found yourself back on the Nordschleifer where you'd raced 15 years before. Why did you return?

Toto Wolff14:06

It was said that only locals can really be fast there. And you had professionals that were very successful on an international level that went to the Nordschlife and were never able to be anywhere near local. So I said to myself, I'm going to show them that I can beat the records. And I told Nikki, who Nikki Lauder had his bad accident there where he almost died in flames. And he said to me,

Presenter14:27

Inflammation

Toto Wolff14:29

Don't be so stupid, nobody cares about the laptop on the Nordlif, you just you can kill yourself, look at me.

Presenter14:35

What was the record that you were trying to break on the Nord Schleifer?

Toto Wolff14:40

So the previous record for the Nautch life, which is 20 kilometers, was 7 minutes 5 seconds. And on one of the training labs, actually, I beat the record.

Presenter14:49

Four seconds you shaved off, I think, in the training glass.

Toto Wolff14:51

The training lab. Yeah, but the car never felt stable. There was something, the tires were just not good enough for this kind of downforce. And eventually when we went for the run, I embarked, I started the lap and I felt something's wrong. But this is where I realized you need to be a professional because I should have stopped the lap and drove back into the pits and I bought it. And I didn't because I was just with the knife between my teeth. I just wanted to do it. And then I had a puncture in that most dangerous part in a downhill and I had a very, very bad shunt.

Presenter15:23

one hundred and eighty nine miles per hour.

Toto Wolff15:25

The first impact was with 27 Gs and the car rolled several times at high speed but it didn't end up in the forest which was lucky but I always came back onto the track and then after 350 meters the car stopped and I was badly injured but instinctively I unplugged myself from the radio and stopped the car which was stopped anyway already so I don't know you know it was really an instinct and I got out and they found me behind the rail with my helmet on lying in the grass and I thought I was dead. So no memories in that. The first memory that came back was in the ambulance feeling some kind of weird tingling in my legs and that was not a nice moment.

Presenter16:03

What was that moment? Was that an epiphany for you?

Toto Wolff16:06

Yes, that was, you know, coming back to what Nikki Lauder said, nobody cares and why do you put yourself into danger, I thought, if this ends up in a paralysis, this was really the most stupid idea in my life. And I remember being brought into the hospital and into an MRI and then a nurse came in and I said to her, just let me know if everything is alright with my spine. And she said to me, I can't tell you. And this, I don't know how long it was, 15 minutes until the doctor came in and said, yes, you have some fractures, but your spinal cord isn't affected. That was horrible 15 minutes. And yeah, that was the moment I said to myself, no more competitive racing.

Presenter16:45

It's time for some more music. Total Wolf, your fourth choice today. What have you gone for and why are you taking it to the Desert Island?

Toto Wolff16:52

So the next one is another super strong one, Iron Sky by Paolo Nuttini. He's Scottish, so my wife's family is Scottish. The lyrics about Iron Sky is something that I can relate to because it says about when you can imagine it, you can do it and not let anybody tell you that it isn't possible.

Speaker 117:13

Oh, that life

Speaker 117:15

Lift drippin' down the wall

Speaker 117:19

A dream that cannot breathe

Speaker 117:23

In its harsh reality

Speaker 117:26

Mass confusion

Speaker 117:29

Stuff to the blind

Speaker 117:33

Serve now to define.

Speaker 117:37

A cold society.

Speaker 117:40

From which we arrive

Presenter17:43

Iron Sky by Paolo Nettini

Presenter17:46

TotoWolf, in twenty thirteen you bought a thirty percent stake in the Mercedes Formula One team. It is unusual for team principals to own part of their team, and some of your critics have been disparaging about your commercial instincts. They say your decisions are too heavily based on the balance sheet. How do you answer them?

Toto Wolff18:02

People sometimes question my motivation, but it is the stopwatch only. If I would give up any dividend to win a world championship, because that is what drives me. But I guess that also some of the critical voices are, you know, you're trying to find points of attack, and at the end it's also a conventional business that hopefully yields returns, and that's sometimes not something that other people like.

Presenter18:27

Under your stewardship, your team have won a record-breaking number of championships. Does every one of those victories taste as sweet?

Toto Wolff18:35

No, it doesn't and that is a reason why sports teams generally don't win many championships in a row. I tried to compare that to Christmas Eve. You know, the first one feels much better than the eight and we had eight championships in a row. And therefore you need to understand that and accept and acknowledge that people get used to it. There is always a risk of seeing results as normal, complacency that can kick in or simply lack of motivation and energy. And it's normal and it's good. But if you're able to set those objectives, overcome spells, negative spells like we're having at the moment, reinvent the team without throwing overboard what's good, you can create something that is sustainably successful and that is my target.

Presenter19:18

How would you describe your relationship with Lewis Hamilton?

Toto Wolff19:22

Louis has become a friend and over years we've gone through difficult spells and very good moments. We celebrated many championships. We had discussions among ourselves which were not always easy. But today he's just a friend. He's an ally. He's the best racing driver in the world. I am very proud of being part of his career.

Presenter19:40

How do you deal with the disagreements when they come around? What's your dynamic between the two of you?

Toto Wolff19:45

I think we have learned and a key moment was in at the end of 2016 where we didn't speak to each other for a while. So I invited him to come to my kitchen in Oxford and sit down and have a chat. And the kind of analogy I gave to him is that also I have arguments with Susie. Even if we shout on each other, which didn't happen a lot, but even if we have this argument and there's never thought of divorcing. And that's why I said to him, I don't want to divorce you. And neither do you, because I want the best dressing driver in our cars and you want to have the best car. So we came to the conclusion that we can have a conflict, we can create an atmosphere where we are able to be brutally honest with each other. And sometimes it's we agree to disagree, but we move on.

Presenter20:30

Looking at your music list, your disc choices today, I'm wondering whether you agree on music.

Toto Wolff20:35

Not always. I mean he has, the drivers have the room next to me at the tracks and I hear him singing when preparing for the races. And I think most often we have a similar music taste. Obviously he's much more sophisticated. But many years ago, I said to him, what would you think, you know, if we were to play ACDC Thunderstruck in a garage before going out with the cars and in a way to have all the mechanics listen to this? And he said, it would make me puke.

Speaker 120:54

Yeah.

Presenter20:54

Right.

Speaker 120:54

Garrow

Presenter21:03

Not a metal fan.

Toto Wolff21:04

It's not up his street, I guess.

Presenter21:06

Well, let's hear one of your choices, Toto. You can take whatever you like to your own island. What's next?

Toto Wolff21:12

It sounds a bit cheesy at first, and obviously it's queen, so it's never cheesy, but the song itself, it's sometimes played in, you know, moments where it can be a bit cheesy and it's we are the champions. And that song obviously we played it many times when we celebrated our race victories and championships. It's the emotion together in the team with the people that are involved and the bond, the tribe that we have created. So there's the emotions attached to it.

Speaker 121:38

I've had myself and kicks in my face

Speaker 121:46

We are the champions, my friend.

Speaker 121:56

And we'll keep on fighting till the end.

Presenter22:02

Queen and we are the champions. Toto Wolf, you're a key character in the Netflix documentary series Formula One, Drive to Survive. In 2021, the cameras captured your intense frustration during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Lewis was on course to take his eighth World Championship, but Max Verstappen from the Red Bull team took advantage of controversial safety car procedures to beat him in an extremely tense final lap. How do you look back at that moment now?

Toto Wolff22:30

Both drivers start with equal points into this race, best man and best machine wins. And best men that they didn't win. And it's still something that stings, not of losing it, because I would have been able, and all of us would have been able to lose that race fair and square and admit that. But it was stolen. And that made it difficult.

Toto Wolff22:53

The FAA was with its next regime, a new president was voted in literally that month, was able to admit that a mistake was made and it was human error, that's how they called it. But obviously that was not bringing us the trophy back and was not making Louis the only eight-time world champion. But you just need to overcome it and I think Louis and I are very similar in that respect. We are able to compartmentalize. But you know, it is what it is. Much worse things happen in the world than being stolen of a world formula world championship. The interesting phenomenon was that we as a team and Louis as a driver, we didn't have a lot of credit and sympathy because we won so many times.

Toto Wolff23:36

And we became the underdog in that moment. People cheered for us and that is still a positive today.

Presenter23:42

What was yeah, what did that feel like to you?

Toto Wolff23:44

I would have rather won the championship, but...

Toto Wolff23:47

You know, today we have more fans.

Presenter23:50

So Lewis's contract is up at the end of the season. Do you want him to stay?

Toto Wolff23:54

Absolutely. It's just such an important pillar of the team.

Presenter23:58

Do you think he will stay?

Toto Wolff23:59

Well, I very much hope. I'm doing everything I can to make him stay.

Presenter24:02

How will you persuade him?

Toto Wolff24:05

I think there is no need to persuade him. He knows about all the goodness and although we we struggled with the car this year and last year, he will be part of the resurrection of the team.

Presenter24:18

Time to go to the music disc number six. What are we going to hear next and why?

Toto Wolff24:21

The next one is another Phil Collins. It's just coincidence actually that it's Phil Collins twice, but the voice and the drums are just amazing. And it's another day in paradise. Not only I love the song itself, but in today's world everything is so self-centered. People never reflect about others' lives or tragedies. And I think we need to be mindful that we are living in paradise, the lives that we are able to enjoy because we are born in the right place at the right time. And it is important for us to remind ourselves about that. And we don't do that enough.

Presenter24:57

She calls out to the man on the street

Presenter25:02

So can you help me?

Presenter25:07

It's cold and I'm nowhere to sleep

Presenter25:11

Is there some way you can tell me?

Presenter25:16

He walks on.

Presenter25:18

Doesn't look bad.

Presenter25:20

He pretends he can't hear her

Presenter25:25

Phil Collins and Another Day in Paradise. So Wolf, one of the things that you've been very open about is your own mental health and your experiences of depression. Why is it important to you to talk about that?

Toto Wolff25:40

The words depression and anxiety, they are twin brothers, you know, all of that is linked together, but nobody speaks about it enough. And I felt that when I suffered from these episodes in the past, that high performance didn't have that. And it made me suffer even more because I thought I'm not going to be ever best in what I do because I have those bad moments. And today I don't have any insecurity anymore about myself. I don't perceive myself at all as powerless, the contrary. And I think this is what people will see in me in my role as well. I'm having this media persona of the successful team principal that has it all. And at the end of the day, what I want to say is even strong men and women, people that are successful in the public eye, suffer.

Toto Wolff26:34

That's why you can suffer. It's allowed. And I want to help to take that stigma away because you can achieve anything in the world even though you have moments where you don't see yourself out.

Presenter26:45

And you've had therapy for twenty years, I think. I wonder how that if that has helped you understand that perhaps those anxieties, perhaps those moments of doubt and depression are mixed in with what has made you successful. It's part of it's connected to the drive, isn't it?

Toto Wolff27:01

Absolutely. I wouldn't want to not have it. I have moments where I wouldn't know how to make the next day, but it is based on my childhood experiences and my own trauma and humiliation. But you asked me today whether I want to get rid of it and I tell you no, I don't want to, because it's a superpower. It makes me more sensitive. I can feel a room. I can feel the energy. You cannot expect all the highs without having the lows. You feel moments and situations with much more intensity. I don't want to be down the middle. And I take the positives with the negatives.

Presenter27:38

You married your second wife, Susie, in 2011. She is a former racing driver herself and still works in the sport today. Do you ask her for advice?

Toto Wolff27:48

Yes, always. I think our relationship is very well balanced and she has some skills that I don't have and the other way around. We work in the same industry and I think that makes us both stronger.

Presenter28:01

Who does the driving?

Toto Wolff28:03

She's much more socially intelligent than me. She leaves me the driving and have me those little uh successes.

Presenter28:06

Yeah.

Presenter28:08

Are you how are you as a backseat driver?

Toto Wolff28:11

The worst.

Toto Wolff28:12

You know, that's a control freak that needs to give up control. And she said to me that she can live with it since she saw me being full of panic whilst being in the passenger seat with Louis Hamilton on a racetrack in a showrun. If you can't trust the seven-time world champion, then it's okay to not trust Suzy's driving.

Presenter28:32

Exactly. It's not about the driver.

Toto Wolff28:35

It's my problem, not the driver's problem.

Presenter28:37

Got it. It's time for your seventh disc today, Toto. What are we going to hear next?

Toto Wolff28:42

The next one is a super positive emotion for me. It's Fallen by Lauren Wood. A song that we played at our wedding in Capri with a gospel singer in the church. That was a beautiful moment.

Presenter28:56

Let's be

Speaker 329:05

I can't move

Speaker 329:08

I haven't fallen for you.

Speaker 329:13

And I was not in you

Speaker 329:16

Was content.

Speaker 329:18

To read me.

Speaker 329:23

Alright.

Speaker 329:25

Be back.

Presenter29:30

Fallen, Lauren Wood.

Presenter29:32

Toto Wolf, your youngest son, Jack, is six, and he's already showing quite an interest in karting. How would you feel if he wanted to become a racing driver?

Toto Wolff29:40

He's very competitive in everything he does, in the car thing he can relate to. And that's why standing on the car track and watching him is is I'm torn and I I see how much he loves it, but I also see the dangers of motor racing overall and putting your kid in a go-kart and in a race car without actually these guys understanding what w the risks. I'm not sure I'm I'm torn, but my parents-in-law and my mother anyway, I can't stop them, so they are full steam ahead.

Speaker 129:52

Mm-hmm.

Presenter30:08

Peaf.

Presenter30:10

And you mentioned that you're not blind to the risks and not to the downsides of the sport either. I know that your daughter has taken you to task about the environmental impact of motor racing. What do you say to her, and how do you balance the industry's demand with your role as a parent?

Toto Wolff30:26

When you talk about Formula One, it's a bit counterintuitive to sustainability, but it's the contrary, because we will show how it can be done with the least possible emissions. So we're spending a lot of money in running our site net zero. Today it is with really 50% CO2-free emissions and energy, green energy, and 50% by still offsetting. But that's going to go to 75%. We are running the most efficient hybrid engines in the world. We'll be utilizing 100% biofuel in 2026. And we want to show a blueprint how you can travel and how you can transport goods around the world with the smallest possible CO2 footprint.

Presenter31:09

Toto, you've lived your life at considerable velocity, but everything is about to change because I'm going to cast you away to the desert island. It's all going to slow right down. How will you adjust to the new pace of life?

Toto Wolff31:22

So when I'm in a good mental space, you can park me on the island and I'm gonna enjoy every single day. What I need is my head so I can think.

Presenter31:33

Will you try and escape?

Toto Wolff31:34

I will always try to find a solution to change the situation that I don't like.

Presenter31:39

Well, one more track before we cast you away. Your eighth choice today. What's it gonna be?

Toto Wolff31:44

Frankie Goes to Hollywood, The Power of Love. It is a love song, but it is a love song that is about protecting your family, protecting the people around you that you care. And that's how I feel about the relationship to my wife, to my children, to my family, to my friends, to my employees.

Presenter32:05

Dreams are like angels

Toto Wolff32:05

Emma's

Speaker 132:06

Yeah.

Toto Wolff32:08

Yeah.

Presenter32:08

Uh

Toto Wolff32:09

They

Presenter32:09

Uh

Toto Wolff32:09

Keep bad at bay, keep bad at bay.

Speaker 132:13

Yeah.

Toto Wolff32:13

Love is the light.

Presenter32:13

Love it.

Toto Wolff32:15

Scaring darkness away

Toto Wolff32:23

I'm so in love with you.

Presenter32:25

Yeah.

Toto Wolff32:26

Yeah.

Presenter32:26

Birds the soul.

Presenter32:30

Make love your goal.

Speaker 332:38

The

Presenter32:38

Uh

Speaker 332:38

Ah

Presenter32:41

The Power of Love Frankie goes to Hollywood. Soto to Wolf. I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere, and you can take one other book. What will it be?

Toto Wolff32:53

It's a bit cliché, but it's the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It is about unfairness, injustice that's happening, but then the revenge always comes.

Presenter33:06

So a personal tale you can relate to?

Toto Wolff33:08

Absolutely. You just have to have the patience.

Presenter33:12

You can also have a luxury item, what would you like?

Toto Wolff33:14

Fins and mask.

Toto Wolff33:16

I'm really into free diving. I like the calmness underwater, being by myself. It's also linked to record holding. I like to know how deep I can go and how long I can hold my breath. How long? How long can you hold it for? Well, it depends how I'm in shape, but I would say holding my breath I can do four and a half, five minutes if I train a bit before the summer holidays and I can go 30 meters down, but it needs to be the right environment. You need to have somebody diving with you. You know, I had an incident in we were on a holiday and I tried to do it by myself, came up with bleeding eyes. Well, we don't want that on the island. No, she's not.

Presenter33:51

Oh, we don't want that on the island. You're going to have to find a monkey to train or something. There are no people there.

Toto Wolff33:55

No, I will do it, but with lesser depth.

Presenter33:57

Okay.

Presenter33:58

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves if you had to?

Toto Wolff34:05

I would save fallen.

Toto Wolff34:09

Because it would remind me my wife and how I can get off the island quickly to see her.

Presenter34:16

Total Wolf, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Toto Wolff34:20

Thank you for having me.

Presenter34:34

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Toto. I'll take him at his word and trust that he won't dive too deeply. We've cast away other petrol heads, including F1 champions Jackie Stewart and Alan Jones, and the motor racing commentator Murray Walker. And Annie Lennox, one of Toto's music choices, is in there too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the folk singer Shirley Collins. I do hope you'll join us.

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