Sky F1 pundit links Toto Wolff with BILLION dollar sale of Mercedes share

Toto Wolff net worth rise — Photo: © LAT Images

F1 News & Gossip

Sky F1 pundit links Wolff with BILLION dollar sale of Mercedes share

The Austrian could be tempted to get out of the business at the right time

Chris Deeley

Sunday 10 December 2023 20:57

Sky Sports' Craig Slater has raised the possibility of Toto Wolff selling his 33% stake in Mercedes' Formula 1 team, thought to be worth billions of Euros

Slater told the Sky Sports F1 podcast recently that some people in team ownership have begun to wonder if their stakes will start to decline in value soon, with interest in the sport waning slightly after the Drive To Survive boom.

The possibility of an 11th team entering the sport could, paradoxically, be a signal that it's time for owners to sell up - as that 11th team would eat into the current 10 teams' revenue sharing agreement.

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Wolff paid a middling eight-figure sum for his share in the team around a decade ago, but could earn a return in the billions if he were to sell up today - a decision which could have crossed his mind this week after controversial FIA action involving him and his wife Susie.

Toto Wolff joined Mercedes at the start of 2013

The Austrian Wolff has an estimated net worth of over $1bn

Wolff has a fierce rivalry with Red Bull head honcho Christian Horner

Slater: It must be quite tempting [to sell]

Slater said: "One or two well-placed insiders have told me that maybe some ownership within Formula 1 have looked at the value of their team has increased and have asked the question, has the sport peaked? Might this be not a bad time to kind of sell out?

"If you're talking about Williams being sold for about £140million and now being worth towards maybe even a billion pounds, never mind dollars nowadays.

"It's interesting that [the] Andretti [family] have tried to get in, maybe would be put off by the price tag of buying a team. Are they good value to buy right now an F1 team? Why are the big sovereign wealth funds... and I suppose people are talking about [the rumours of] Aramco buying Aston Martin from Lawrence Stroll and paying top dollar for that.

"If you were Dorilton or Toto Wolff or Lawrence Stroll, who bought it via liquidation, yes, he paid off a lot of the creditors, but you’ve maybe paid a couple hundred million, or I think Toto paid 50million euros for his stake, it’s now worth three billion or whatever.

"Does that have its own incentive to sell, when in a few years you’ve made such a big gain, which is why I question, it must be quite tempting for some of these owners to maybe think about offloading it in the present climate, which is certainly benign compared to where it was a few years ago."

Mercedes FIA Toto Wolff Sky Sports F1 Drive to Survive Craig Slater