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Cheeky Pint · 2 min · Oct 20, 2026

Mercedes screens engineers for values as well as ability

Toto Wolff

Team Principal & Co-Owner, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team

Led Mercedes to eight consecutive constructors' titles from 2014 to 2021; part-owner and team principal since 2013.

  • John CollisonHost · Co-founder & president, Stripe

    Sold his first startup, Auctomatic, at 17, then co-founded Stripe in 2010.

About this segment

Wolff applies driver-style selection to a 2,500-person team, prioritizing humility and integrity. The policy favors collaboration over individual brilliance without regard for conduct.

From “How Toto Wolff built the most valuable team in F1”, Oct 20, 2026. Watch the full episode

“The extraordinary scientist or engineer that hasn't got the right values of humility, integrity, honesty, enthusiasm will have no future in the organization.”
Toto Wolffat 8:01 · Cheeky Pint8:01

Takeaways

  1. The 2,500-person team has only about 150 people at races.
  2. Humility, integrity, honesty and enthusiasm are nonnegotiable.
  3. Technical brilliance does not excuse destructive behavior.
Watch 2:22 from 6:15

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 11:59Mercedes tested a clever loophole before putting it on the car4:59
  2. 28:59A CFO’s warning led Wolff to exit his dot-com investments5:18
  3. 46:27F1 teams combine scarce-asset appeal with strong profits6:52
  4. 0:12F1 spots driver talent through pace, feel and teamwork4:25

  5. 6:15Mercedes screens engineers for values as well as ability2:22

  6. 21:03Mercedes stops engineering work that misses the lap-time target4:13Up next
  7. 37:55Ownership gives Wolff room to run Mercedes entrepreneurially5:00
  8. 1:08:02Wolff expects two or three people to share his role3:10

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 6:19

    The other maybe less talked about part, you know, obviously there's a huge amount of fixation on driver selection and who'll get the next seat and everything like that. Presumably a lot of what you spend time on is recruiting the right engineers and aerodynamicists and things like that. How does spotting that kind of talent work? Are you trying to pull people from other Formula One teams or from other industries and outside?

  2. 6:40

    And how are you, just what have you learned about talent outside of drivers? So, when you look at the Formula 1 team from outside as a fan, you see two drivers, you see then a guy like me who is sitting in front of a screen, and then you see the mechanics and sometimes the engineers on the pit wall. This is what you expect to be the racing team. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's about 150 people that go to the tracks, including marketing, so it's 90 technical operational people but we are two and a half thousand you know here in the uk we have two hubs one that is does the engine the other one what we call the chassis that is the works team and we are 2500 people in an in an organization that is quite vast if you look at the two cars and for me the selection process of the people that i want to work with is the same or is similar

  3. 7:39

    in terms of the pattern than for racing drivers and i always say there's not two superstars in the team there's two and a half thousand and i treat all of them equally and we've learned from the all blacks 10 or more years earlier and they have a saying which is on their training ground that says no d**ks and we have We have continued to run that motto. The extraordinary scientist or engineer that hasn't got the right values of humility, integrity, honesty, enthusiasm will have no future in the organization.

  4. 8:25

    We're trying to filter that out pretty early. Sometimes you find out later, but no place for the genius asshole.