Toto Wolff’s life changed during a fateful day at the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 2009, when a tyre on his Porsche 911 RSR cried enough.
Wolff had been determined to break a lap record at the fearsome Nordschleife, before an accident that changed his entire career trajectory – and his love life!
Toto Wolff recounts 189mph Nurburgring crash
Prior to entering Formula 1, where he has carved out a career as a hugely successful businessman as CEO and team boss at Mercedes after initially buying into Williams over a decade ago, Wolff had been a racing driver.
Having been bitten by the motor racing bug as a teenager, Wolff cut his teeth at the Walter Lechner Racing School at the Osterreichring, and set about trying to become a professional racing driver.
Competing in Formula Ford in the early 1990s, Wolff’s promise wasn’t enough to progress far – particularly when his main sponsor pulled out in the wake of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger’s fatal accidents.
It was then that Wolff moved into banking and investments, making him a very wealthy man after successfully establishing his own company Marchfifteen. This success allowed him to return to amateur racing in the early 2000s. Having competed in the 1994 Nurburgring 24 Hours, Wolff was enamoured with the technical and scary Nurburgring Nordschleife – and the chance to try setting a new lap record at ‘The Green Hell’ proved too alluring an opportunity to pass up.
Having planned on entering the same race in a GT class in 2009, Wolff picked up the story in an interview with ESPN.
“Someone had the funny idea of trying to break the lap record for GT cars there. And I thought, that’s a fun idea, I like a challenge,” he said.
At the time, the record for GT cars – held by Sabine Schmitz – stood at 7:07 (minutes).
- Thomas M aher
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