Mercedes F1 Exec Dir Toto Wolff is the head of "the best team" in F1, which has "become a byword for excellence, innovation and speed," according to Oliver Holt of the London DAILY MAIL. But in sport, "excellence is not always the salve it should be and it has given Wolff a dilemma." His Mercedes team is "the best in F1 by a distance." His drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, have won 32 of the last 38 races. When that happens, "people start to hate you for making things predictable." Wolff "knows this." Unlike "many in the upper echelons of F1," he has a self-deprecating sense of humor and an "acute sense of the fact that, from the outside, the sport can sometimes appear like a circus full of neurotic clowns." He knows one of the "great contradictions of sport is that winning too much can be bad for the brand." Wolff: "If you start to win, you run around with a target on your back and people will try to shoot you." He has an idea of how he "might fix it next season" but he knows it is "a risk." It involves Hamilton and Rosberg and the "dynamic of their fierce rivalry." Wolff said, "Our dominance is bad for Formula 1. It is. It makes the racing boring. It becomes predictable how the result is going to be. The sport needs multiple winners. It needs the odd freak result. It needs the underdog to win. The moment you become a dominant force, you suffer and your brand suffers. You become the dark side of the force. ... If you start to behave like the establishment, you are finished and people will have animosity against you. So our dominance is bad for Formula One and it's bad for us, but what can I do?" He added, "So I want the dominance to continue but if it were to continue like this, I need to think what to do so we do not become the enemy and how we can help the show. Maybe it's about unleashing the two of them [Hamilton and Rosberg] completely. Make them have their own strategy cars. That would be a solution." Hamilton and Rosberg are only two of the 1,200 Mercedes employees Wolff has responsibility for "but he is aware that the bitter battle between them can set the tone" not only for what goes on in the garage at races but for "what happens at the factory in between grands prix." Wolff: "We had a more relaxed approach this year, letting them fight it out on the track and it might have a new dimension next year. I want to contain it. I don't want fighting in the team. I'd like the boxers to fight but not the trainers and the physios and everybody around the ring." F1 fans "yearn for an open fight." Most "hate the idea of team orders." They want to see "struggle and conflict." But sometimes, as with former McLaren drivers Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in '88 and '89, "there comes a point where the rivalry becomes so destructive that the driver partnership is no longer viable." Wolff said, "I still believe that our pairing has done the team a lot of good in accelerating the development of our car. If that were to become not limited to the track and the usual spiel with the media, the solution would be to have what happened to McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari and have a No. 1 and No. 2" (DAILY MAIL, 12/27).
