What Toto Wolff's bold response to Mercedes gaining F1 rivals as a junior team rumour actually means

Photo: © IMAGO

Mercedes

What Toto Wolff's bold response to Mercedes gaining F1 rivals as a junior team rumour actually means

Alpine have been rumoured to be in the process of being bought out by Mercedes

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Thursday 19 March 2026 11:54

Toto Wolff could not have been clearer in his response to rumours that one of Mercedes' F1 rivals could soon become their junior team.

"No," Wolff told F1 media at the Chinese Grand Prix. "And I’m telling you in capital letters: NO. We don’t want to have a junior team. End of story."

But that does not mean that Mercedes are out of the race when it comes to buying shares in the Alpine F1 team.

Article continues under video

Mercedes and Alpine share a close relationship, after the Enstone-based outfit became the latest customer of Mercedes' power unit department earlier this year.

Alpine ditched their Renault partnership at the end of 2025 as the French car manufacturer dropped out of F1 for the first time since 1983.

But Wolff's response is pretty clear. Despite the close relationship between the pair, rumours of them becoming the junior team of Mercedes in a Red Bull-Racing Bulls-type relationship is out of the question.

Comments from Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore during the same weekend, however, suggests that Mercedes are very much in the race to buy shares in the team, with Otro Capital looking to sell at least part of their 24 per cent share in the Enstone outfit.

"Every day is a new situation," Briatore said during Friday's team principal press conference in Shanghai. "I don’t know what is the latest one, but what I say is that I know it’s a negotiation with Mercedes, not with Toto, with Mercedes, and we see. In this moment we have three or four potential buyers.

"Don’t forget, we’re talking about the Otro shares, nothing to do with Alpine. It’s the share owned by this hedge fund, it’s called Otro, American fund. They want to sell the 24 per cent and a few candidates are ready to do the deal."

Mercedes-Alpine sale rumours

Despite Wolff being a 28 per cent shareholder in the Mercedes F1 team, it seems that he is not part of the negotiations with Alpine, according to Briatore, but his denial of the links were specifically to do with Alpine becoming a junior team of Mercedes.

It seems as though the deal to acquire shares in the Alpine team is still being negotiated, and could happen, which would surely lead to at least some involvement from Mercedes in the operations of the team.

Wolff himself recently sold 15 per cent of his share in the Mercedes F1 team, but is still a huge player within the Brackley-based outfit, and is still their team principal as they look to become world champions for the first time since 2021 this year.

The Austrian has a reported net worth of $2.7billion, and he managed to claim a 30 per cent ownership in Mercedes back in 2013, after leaving Williams and selling his shares in that team.

Wolff severed all ties with Williams back in 2016, when he sold the remaining five per cent that he owned in the team, and his investment in Mercedes has gone on to yield six drivers' championship titles and eight constructors' titles, with potentially more on the horizon following the regulations overhaul in the sport.

F1 Mercedes Toto Wolff Alpine Flavio Briatore