An inside look at Mercedes: How Wolff took a good look in the mirror

Mercedes thought that 2022 was an anomaly and by 2023 everything would be 'normal' again. Mercedes asked Matt Whyman to be embedded in the team for 18 months and to write a book about that period to document what it takes. The result is the now-published Inside Mercedes F1 book. Bahrain 2023 was to be the first glorious chapter of the book. It turned out differently.

"I can't remember the position but they were about 0.6 off the pace and it was the end of the world. When the chequered flag fell, everyone melted away," Whyman recalled in a conversation with GPblog. "But I kind of took this instruction literally, don't move. I thought, well, no one's told me to move. So I stayed there. The only person who remained was Toto, right in front of me, staring at the data on the screen from his high stool.

"I don't think he's even aware that I'm there. But I witnessed a dark moment for Toto as he processed what it meant. They effectively wrote off the season in that first race and then after a couple of minutes of just staring, he rolled up his sleeves, stepped out to face the cameras and did his thing. But it was a really revealing moment for me that this was a team principle with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

A look inside Mercedes F1 during a difficult period

Mercedes could have decided that the 2023 season was not the right year for a book after all. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, Whyman was given extra encouragement to complete the project. "Their view was that to paint a picture of a high performance team in adversity was more revealing than a portrait of a team that was just winning every race, just effortlessly cruising at the front," said Whyman.

In the end, we now have a book that gives a unique look inside a team, in the most difficult period of its existence; with not only its own staff longing for successes of yesteryear, but also sponsors, fans and not least the drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. They yearn for a car that can compete in every Grand Prix. Perhaps it's remarkable to the outside observer, that it has become a story of positivism.

"Hand on heart, I never saw anyone turn on each other. There was frustration. Of course there was frustration, but it wasn't frustration with each other. It was just a frustration at the situation. And emotions can run high. So in an engineering debrief, the drivers want to extract the very best, not just from the car, but from their engineers. But it's not a negative when I say emotions running high, they're not running high negatively. It's just, are we, is everyone here putting in 100%? And it's just a sort of a stress test," he added.

Wolff hailed as the leader of Mercedes

The man who keeps everything on track is CEO and team boss Toto Wolff. Whyman sees in him "a very effective leader". "He's not an engineer, he's not an aerodynamicist, he's not a tyre expert, but he makes it his mission to understand as much as he needs to as a leader and then bring it all together. So in any meeting he's there asking tricky questions, but not technical questions because that's not really his role. But then at the end of each meeting he'll always bring it together with whatever the kind of specific thing that they're looking at is to just to remind everyone of the bigger picture, what we're chasing here and what we've got to do."

In 2023, Mercedes quickly concluded that the team had gone down the wrong development route. In Formula 1, getting back on track quickly is extremely difficult. One pitfall is becoming too impatient, as this can have a paralysing effect on the organisation and its people. For the book, Whyman spoke at length with Wolff about this.

"Toto freely admits that over the winter of ‘23 to ‘24, he felt that he was putting too much pressure on his lieutenants and that it was not productive. He recognised that so he had this talk with himself over the winter period, that this isn't helping the team with me being this. ‘We've got to do something, we’ve got to do something…’ And he was visibly more, I’d say relaxed, is maybe not the right word, but just still focused, still very driven, but this pain wasn't there and through the ‘23 season I thought he looked pained."

Losing is not part of Mercedes

When asked by Whyman, Wolff denied feeling pain. "He said, 'I don't feel pain during a race weekend. It's just this visceral reaction to losing'," Whyman reiterated, before stressing that Wolff did not become resigned. As, according to him, the entire team was and remains highly motivated. "They came third but because it's Mercedes, it's the end of the world. And there is again an expectation from the media, you're Mercedes.

"But you can only judge the team on their current performance and on their current mindset and their outlook. So I would say the mindset is there. The performance isn't there in the shape of the car, but that momentum behind it is all in place. So there are things that still need to be, the car needs to be performing. But everything else I'd say is there."

Whyman then agrees that sometimes a difficult period is not at all detrimental. "Yes, I don't think anybody in Mercedes would say that it was a good thing because it's been uncomfortable for all of them. They're all very, very competitive, by everyone in the paddock, every team, everyone is competitive. And when you're a competitive individual in a competitive team and you're losing, it's very difficult. You carry that in your heart. But from an outside point of view, I would agree that I think this is a good thing. It focuses minds. It unshackles you from your legacy and you are being judged on what you're doing now. And that requires you being forward thinking rather than sort of mindful of what's behind you."

What will Mercedes be like without Hamilton?

There's going to be a drastic change. Lewis Hamilton will depart and switch to Ferrari for 2025. "I think it can ultimately only be a good thing for everyone. I understand Lewis's reason, and it literally boils down to a boyhood dream, and just ‘I've got to do it, I've got to say that I drove in the red car’. But for Mercedes it's a shock initially.

"It was going to happen at some point. It was the timing of the event. But personally I think it'll be really interesting to see how Mercedes hit the ground in 2025 without him. A lot of people would say that the team is built around one driver, I don't think it is. But attention without a doubt is always focused on Lewis. So to have that attention removed will be really interesting to see how the team responds to that," said Whyman.

It could just be a great prompt for another book. Whyman laughs: "There was this running joke with the Mercedes when they were on the back foot that they were going, ‘So you're going to be here until we win it. This could be some time’. I'd love to come back, but who knows, we'll have to see".

Matt Whyman's book Inside Mercedes F1 is now on sale in bookstores.