Wolff misses his buddy Lauda: 'After 48 hours I get bored'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Toto Wolff still misses the company of Niki Lauda, who died in 2019. The two Austrians got along well, but Wolff also remembers one moment when he could have done something about Lauda.
Wolff misses his buddy
In May 2019 Lauda died in hospital in Zurich. There he had fallen ill after treatment on his kidneys and passed away in his sleep. To this day, Wolff misses his buddy at Mercedes. Together they were at the foundation of Mercedes' success, but also saw each other a lot off the track.
''Personally, I get bored after 48 hours, so then I look for someone I can call, so I can banter a bit over the phone,'' Wolff says according to Motorsport-total.com. Wolff had those conversations with Lauda quite often. On the circuit, but also outside. One time Lauda had a really bad time.
Lauda on a visit
Indeed, on the second day of his holiday in Italy, Wolff received a message: ''I'm here'', Lauda wrote. Wolff wondered where exactly Lauda meant, but he was clear in his reply. ''I'm in front of your hotel with my boat. Will you come down for breakfast at eight o'clock?'', Wolff recalled.
''I said, 'You can kiss my a**.' For you to even follow me around in Italy now and force me to get up and have an espresso with you, I'm really not going to do that,'' Wolff says years later. However, Lauda was not content with Wolff's rejection: ''He stopped there and kept waiting for me to come,'' the Mercedes team boss concludes.