The titles followed quickly, with Mercedes collecting both the Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championships in 2014, the first in its dynastic eight-year run. The timing of the move also worked well for Mercedes, given rule changes that expanded hybrid engine use in F1-which the German automaker had already spent more than $100 million developing. “Everything else I do is to become better in Formula 1,” he says. Race Course | Wolff begins a teaching fellowship at Harvard Business School in 2024. In 2013, he departed Williams and took a 30% ownership stake in Mercedes at a $165 million valuation, Forbes estimates. Wolff agreed, but only under the stipulation that he could buy in as a co-owner. “Toto will never tell you something he believes is not really true, and that’s why he’s so persuasive.” “He’s not a bullshitter,” says René Berger, Wolff’s longtime friend and a Mercedes F1 board member. He bluntly told them they were vastly under-budgeting the team, and Mercedes replied by offering him the top job. That same year Mercedes was struggling and invited Wolff to Stuttgart to tap his expertise. Wolff invested in the Williams F1 racing team a few years later and helped deliver a stunning Spanish Grand Prix victory in 2012. He bought 49% of HWA in 2006 and later helped take it public in a $175 million IPO, netting himself an additional $85 million. That led him to engine maker HWA AG, which supplied Mercedes’ lower-level racing teams. Flush with cash, he wound down his company and returned to his first love, auto racing, and started managing junior drivers. Two years later, at 28, Wolff notched a profit of more than $30 million, almost entirely from the sales of text-messaging outfit UCP and video game publisher JoWooD. He founded Vienna-based tech incubator Marchfifteen in 1998, spending his days cold calling potential investors. He came up short chasing his passion-in part because he is too tall at six-foot-five-and soon shifted to business. Born in Vienna, he dreamed of becoming a race car driver since childhood. That monomaniacal desire to win is hardwired into Wolff. “So choosing between financial success or sporting success, every day of the week, every day of the year, I’ll go for the sporting success.” “I would give up every single penny of the profits to win,” he says.
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