Part 1: Q&A with Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Toto Wolff
Tom Crotty: Jim, can I start with a quick question to you: Why Formula One and why Mercedes?
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: We do have a genuine passion for sport as evidenced by the sports we are involved in and Formula One is one of the world’s most exciting sports – more people watch Formula One than pretty much anything else. It also is an intriguing marriage of sport and technology. We are always debating what would Lewis do if he was in a different car? This intriguing marriage, which is very similar to our America’s Cup challenge, which we are discovering, is exactly the same because it’s quite a technical challenge to build one of these boats that really shouldn’t sail. It’s a ten-storey building on a coffee table really, sailing on a coffee table. It is very exciting and a fantastic sport. Secondly in terms of Mercedes, I think we just have a great admiration for a fantastic engineering company that has been very much on the top of its game and been very successful in the sport.
Tom Crotty: Toto, what does it mean having INEOS coming in as a Principal Partner?
Toto Wolff: It’s obviously a superb new chapter for us to attract INEOS and I think what kind of unites us is the ambition and the competitiveness. We got to know each other after Barcelona testing last year and I’ve known Dave for a while, who shares this competitiveness and when I started to look a little bit into INEOS you can see what mankind is able to create with passion, understanding and the drive to succeed over 20 years from a start-up to one of the most successful companies in the world. I think these values unite us in a way and we got on immediately. We share the passion for competitive sports – be it sailing, be it cycling. We loved the 1:59 attempt and it was just a matter of time that we would find that common denominator in Formula One, the fastest lab in the world, true engineering and here we sit and we start this great new chapter for these two companies.
Part 2: Questions from the floor
Alan Baldwin, Reuters: It is a five-year-partnership and Mercedes has yet to sign-up – what conclusions can we draw from that?
Toto Wolff: Like I have always said, we are in this for the long-term. Mercedes provides a great marketing platform for our brand; this is what we do: we build race cars and we build road cars. Formula One is the halo platform for hybrid engineering, something that is not communicated enough because it was talked down at the beginning of the V6 hybrid era and it is something we should really put more emphasis on. In that respect with all the things that are out in the media we like the platform but at the same time we are in negotiations with the rights holders and things need to be sorted out, but the partnership is clearly something that indicates our wish to continue our successful journey in Formula One.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: We don’t really know a great deal but it is obviously at the cutting-edge of technology and it is clearly going to be a lot of technology transfer from an outfit where Toto has got a thousand of the world’s best engineers working on new and better ways of doing things, production-wise and these sort of things, so there is value there that is quite difficult to measure, but if I look at the Mercedes image 15 or 20 years ago it was a taxi or a sort of an elderly gentlemen’s car, wasn’t it? Think about it. I would never have bought a Mercedes 20 years ago but today it is a very different image for Mercedes. I think a lot of that is associated with the success and not just its participation in Formula One but its success. If they had backed a team that has been moderately successful it would have been quite different but the fact that they have been arguably the best or most successful sports team in the world… they have won the Formula One World Championship six times in a row – I don’t think that anybody else has done that. That enhanced the Mercedes image enormously. It changed the Mercedes image. Now that I think about it, I am one of these older gentlemen…
Jon Noble, motorsport.com: Negotiations are ongoing but what timeframe do you expect?
Toto Wolff: As you said it is an ongoing process and it is a complicated set of contracts between the FIA, the commercial rights holder and the teams – that needs time. I wouldn’t want to commit here to give you a specific date because there are quite a few topics that remain to be agreed on and it’s a work in process. Clearly there is the will and the wish for all of the stakeholders to come to a close before we embark on the 2021 season because that would be an uncomfortable situation.
Rob Harris, Associated Press: How important is Lewis Hamilton staying with the team for this partnership? Any update on his contract? And secondly, is there any concern reading the situation in China and so many people moving around in the upcoming weeks and months of the season?
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: I’ve met Lewis and his dog for five minutes. So, I don’t know Lewis but I am a great admirer. I think he is one of the greatest drivers and an extremely talented man but in terms of the future I think it is a question for Toto…
Toto Wolff: I think it is the obvious pairing going forward. We would like to have the fastest man in the car, and I know that Lewis wants to be in the fastest car. There is an obvious mutual outcome, but you know we travel around the world almost ten months every year, we go on our nerves every second weekend and what we do over the winter is that we leave each other in peace. The last conversation I had with him was on the evening before the Christmas party where we had a nice chat that we would start our discussions once he comes back from America and we have properly kicked-off the season. I have great belief in the abilities of the team to attract the best drivers and at the moment Lewis has proven that he is the best current driver with his six titles and in the mid- and long-term I would hope that we are able to continue to provide technology to the best driver and attract them. In terms of China, Formula E was cancelled. They are about three weeks before us and they cancelled last week so I would very much hope that we go to China. I am actually after this going to the Chinese embassy for my biometric scan. At the moment it looks like we are going to China but not going would be a shame. We had full grandstands last year, it was sold out, China starts to become a really important market in terms of the fan followership where we have activities in Shanghai around the race and not going there would obviously not be great for the fans and ourselves but health comes first and I hope that they get in control of that. That has priority.
Fernando Garcia, SNTV: Mercedes has been dominating the sport in the last few years. Is the competition losing a bit of attractiveness for the fans? Did you have discussions to make the competition a bit more attractive?
Toto Wolff: The data speaks a different language. We were presented the 2019 data by Liberty last week and you can see that our audiences have grown everywhere. You would imagine that linear TV is something that should be quietly shrinking, and it is not for Formula One. We are actually one of the few sports that is growing the audiences whilst we are moving certain countries behind the pay wall. The UK is a great example obviously when we were with the BBC or then Channel 4 the absolute audiences where much bigger than we have today, but Sky is doing a great deal and they are providing lots of content and this is growing. We are looking at the year 2019 with almost two billion viewers, 419 million unique viewers, almost 90 million views over a weekend and an average of more than 20 million live viewers for the Grands Prix. These are huge numbers compared to any other sport out there and that is really a stand-out. In terms of global attraction for the sport it is there. We are the fastest growing sport in social media, even compared to all the American leagues. You can see that we are on a good track. The reason behind it is that Liberty is doing a good job by opening up to social media which wasn’t the case before and I think we had a great competition, even with Mercedes winning a sixth championship you can say does this make people turn off? But the point is there was still variability and unpredictability. You wouldn’t know before the weekend if a Ferrari was on pole position or a Red Bull, whether Max Verstappen would win, the battle between the generations is something that is a great attraction, Vettel against Leclerc, Verstappen against Hamilton, this is something that attracts the audiences. For me the best news is that we are growing our audiences and fanbase with the younger generations. Overall, we are on a really good path.
Steven Errity, Auto Express Magazine: A question for Jim, you have an endeavour in the automotive industry with your new off-road project. Do you foresee any kind of cross-over involvement?
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: I think inevitably there will be some cross-over, especially once we get to know Mercedes. I don’t know the automotive world as close as my world of chemicals but in the chemicals world we compete with each other, but we know each other quite well and I am sure automotive is no different really. The idea is not for a vehicle that competes with anything really in the Mercedes range. There is no reason there shouldn’t be cooperation and we are always sort of eager to learn things that we might be able to acquire.
Jonathan McEvoy, Daily Mail: Will you now be at races more regularly as a result of this partnership?
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: There is quite a lot of races in the calendar of course but the answer is: yes. Definitely Monaco. I am definitely going to that one which is the glamourous one. I will go to a few, maybe Monza or Belgium.
Toto Wolff: Maybe a story that is interesting because you are making fun of the Monaco thing and going to the glamourous Grand Prix. How we met Jim is not at all glamourous or trying to be important. Jim attended the Barcelona testing last year and we didn’t know that he was there. He was invited by one of our partners, UBS, as a guest and did the whole tour as a guest of UBS. He was introduced to Esteban Gutierrez and Valtteri and you said to me they were friendly.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: Yes, very lovely.
Toto Wolff: That was really nice to hear. Eventually a few weeks later I went through who was there from UBS and I saw Sir Jim Ratcliffe and I wasn’t sure if it was really you so in the end we started emailing and eventually it was Sir Jim Ratcliffe. He didn’t at all expect any special treatment or anything, we would have rolled out the red carpet for him but that wasn’t necessary and so again from the values that we share whilst trying to be successful and competitive with great ambition still keeping the feet on the ground. I think that is a very important personality trait while we all felt that in the group as a collective, we can do some good stuff.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: At the end of the day the relationship has to work and if Toto and I and the people that work for Toto and the people that work for me don’t get on with each-other these sorts of partnerships are not going to be either that successful or that enjoyable. One of the ways in which we got to know Toto’s guys and the values in his organization was through the America’s Cup cooperation where we have a technical collaboration. A bunch of Toto’s guys now work on the technical challenges in building this boat which is very difficult, and it has been a super relationship because if you look at the Chief Executive of our team he has been involved in the last eleven America’s Cup. On one of those, one of the other Formula One teams had some engineers to their resource and it didn’t work because they were a bit arrogant and what have you… In the case of the Mercedes Formula One Team, they have a very similar attitude and spirit to the INEOS people. We don’t like arrogance, we don’t like bullies, we don’t like the I-word, we always use the We-word, that sort of thing. It just worked seamlessly between the guys that we had down in Portsmouth, about 30 of Toto’s guys who fitted in really well and really engaged on the project. That was one of the ways we got to understand how your team operates. The fact that Toto and his team have won six championships on the trot is not an accident. It is the fact that Toto and his team are doing things really well, really detailed, really good team ethos, he gets his team to work together, if you get teams to work together they are worth double, if they don’t… it’s not an accident.
Toto Wolff: We tried to develop the overall strategies of where this should go, but on all operational levels we shared these values and we have the same kind of attitude towards competition of taking our competitors seriously and not taking anything for granted, no sense of entitlement. Obviously within the layers of the organization you can see that and for us it came at the right time. Next year, Formula One faces restructuring, a cost cap comes in which I believe is a good thing because it obliges us to operate with greater scrutiny and will turn our entities into profitable entities. A guy I would like to mention is Graham Miller, who sits there calmly in the back who runs our Mercedes-Benz Applied Science group. He took the project on with Ben Ainslie and his team to help win the America’s Cup challenge and within 24 hours he deployed himself to Portsmouth. Without thinking twice. I haven’t seen Graham since, I get the reports once a week, he settled in well in Portsmouth, I think Portsmouth must be better than Brackley. We have this kind of personalities within the organization, sometimes heroes that are not in the first row, that don’t get this kind of media attention, but this is why this relationship will function.
Andrew Benson, BBC Sport: Toto, on that subject: What’s the new target you set your team this year to keep them motivated to win another world championship?
Toto Wolff: Every year we try to set the right objectives and objectives that are being understood throughout the organization. It is so important to wake up with purpose. I don’t see a lack of motivation and purpose within the organization. The pain of losing is so much more intense and lasts so much longer than enjoying winning. This is in a way what drives us strongly and the sheer thought about losing makes you forget about all your previous achievements. Last year’s record doesn’t buy us any credit for the 2020 championship. So, all lap times, all points go to zero and we are yet again in front of another challenge and in a way there is a reason why six was a world record because it is bloody difficult. We want to push that needle further, we are a great group of people that has just found partners that share the same values and will be pushing us also to be successful…
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: When I had my trip around Brackley and saw all the facilities and the wind tunnel and everything… the thing I was most surprised by was the fact that the car changes every single race and there are microscopic improvements every single race but if the car didn’t improve every race, there is no chance of winning a championship. I can’t remember what the gain was over the course of a season…
Toto Wolff: Two seconds.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: You don’t build a car and then race it for a season. In other words: it is not easy, it is a continuous, intense challenge.
Toto Wolff: And this year’s championship is a two-year-championship. It is not only about 2020 under the current regulations, but there is such a massive regulatory change for 2021 that balancing your allocation of resource will be crucial and how much of your resource you are switching into the 2021 car, because obviously the learning and development slope is much steeper at the beginning. If you get it wrong and you are a month behind, you are half a second behind. This is a challenge that we have embraced in the past and we love that.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe: And you’ve got to help to build this boat, Toto.
Toto Wolff: And we have to help to build a boat and we have some ideas about cycling, too.
Lewis Larkam, crash.net: Is there any update on your future?
Toto Wolff: My role is different to all the other team principals. I am a partner in the team and the managing partner of the team, we have a joint venture with Daimler and obviously I have to pinch myself every day to have the opportunity to be in that situation. It’s very different. We are planning our long-term strategy together with Daimler and Jim and his partners coming in is yet another building block and so all sails are set for a successful future. But like with Lewis we are in the middle of discussions and tweaking here and there and I wouldn’t really want to make comment when things are going to be signed because if I give a date you are going to ask me all the time.
Jon Noble, motorsport.com: You’ve mentioned the value of hybrids earlier on. The British government has announced last week banning the sale of hybrids from 2035. What do you think this means for Formula One?
Toto Wolff: The Formula One Hybrid Power Units are the most efficient power units in the world. We have more than 50% thermal efficiency and there is no other engine like this. Our road car division is learning from that. So now, by adding the bio components to the fuels and gradually we will be stepping this up, it is a joint exercise between the FIA, the fuel suppliers and all of us teams, I think we are pushing ourselves hard like we need to. I think Jean Todt is at the forefront of lowering our CO2 footprint, of lowering our emissions and we will be onboard to take the challenge to make this power units even more efficient. Not everybody is running 100% electric vehicles now but when you look at the forecast that Daimler is giving for 2030 there will be quite a lot of hybrid vehicles in the mix and if you ask me for my personal stand point I have driven all these vehicles and hybrid is a good solution. It allows you to go electric in urban areas which is from your home to your office and if you go to the airport you avoid running out of electricity because you have a small normal engine. I think this is the future.
