Toto Wolff reveals F1 row with Mercedes chief over the Daily Mail and coffee cups

Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff has revealed how his first visit to Brackley sparked a debate about optics with then team boss Ross Brawn.

Wolff has been team principal at Mercedes since 2013, when he took over from Brawn after the Brit had led the revival of the German car manufacturer as a works team.

Since taking over at the team and working with legendary drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, Wolff has overseen eight constructors' titles and seven drivers' championships.

That included a run between 2014-2021 when the team won eight consecutive titles, making Wolff one of the most successful team principals in the modern F1 era.

Now, he has opened up on his first visit to the team's headquarters, when he was already a stakeholder, something he has continued to be while still being team principal.

"With my first visit to the team, because I was a shareholder and it was my first time there, I sat in the lobby and there was an old Daily Mail newspaper taken into a few bits and an old coffee cup where you could see the coffee that was drunk a few hours earlier before," Wolff revealed in an interview at the Autosport Business Exchange.

"It wasn't the way I wanted the team as a point of sale so I went up to Ross Brawn who led the team back in the day and I said 'thank you for having me but it's not what I would expect from a Formula 1 team', and he said 'the old Daily Mail, which by the way people are interested in reading or the coffee cup isn't making the car faster, it is good engineering'.

"And I said 'I disagree because it shows the attention to detail. And if the lobby isn't properly presented, how does the car look under the bonnet?'"

Mercedes set for 2026 revival?

Wolff is currently trying to oversee the second coming of Mercedes as a modern-day championship-winning outfit, with the team having spent several years in a rebuilding phase.

Following the departure of Hamilton, George Russell has really stepped up to the plate as team leader, winning two races in 2025 and guiding rookie team-mate Kimi Antonelli's early career.

Russell and Antonelli have been renewed as a partnership for the 2026 season too, with Russell claiming that Mercedes are his best hope of challenging for a championship next year.

New regulations are potentially going to cause a shake up in the competitive order of F1, and Mercedes are said to be best positioned to capitalise upon that.

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