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Toto Wolff has revealed how a slogan from the All Blacks side of rugby has helped foster the team ethic that drives Mercedes’ remarkable success in F1.
Mercedes has won seven consecutive Drivers ‘and Constructors’ World Championships, six of the individual titles went to Lewis Hamilton and the other to Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton always pays tribute to the team whenever they win a race or secure pole position and Wolff also salutes the collective effort of everyone involved on the track and at the factory.
And the Austrian believes that leaving egos at the door is the key, since that policy has been adopted by the New Zealand rugby union XV, so admired.
“We have a sports psychologist on the team named Ceri Evans, who is also the sports psychologist for the All Blacks,” Wolff said in an interview on the Formula 1 website.
“One of the All Blacks mottos is ‘No d *** heads’ and we carry that philosophy with us too.
“We care about each other on the team and I think this is being felt.
“But not everything is quackery and we are all very happy with each other, there is also a way to deal with pressure. It is a safe environment.
“We don’t have a hiring and firing policy, we don’t blame each other. It can be heated, and that is very important, diversity of opinions. But it never leads to a situation where we fight each other.
“If we fight, at first, that means the characters don’t fit together.”
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Wolff also explained how empathy with her colleagues had permeated her social life after moving to Oxford, about 20 miles from Mercedes’ base in Brackley.
“There is a lot of camaraderie, I would call it,” said the 48-year-old.
“I had a strange situation in 2015 when I moved to the UK and for my birthday on January 12th my wife Suzie said ‘who do you want to invite?’
“The only people I could imagine inviting were my closest confidants on the team. We ended up having dinner with 10 or more colleagues of mine and their wives, and that shows how close we were from the beginning.
“I have a real interest in people. I like spending a lot of time with them, understanding their struggles, their concerns and also what motivates and challenges them ”.
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