Toto Wolff Receives Criticism After Slamming Mercedes W14
Former Formula 1 team owner Eddie Jordan is not one to shy away from speaking his mind, and he's made his feelings about Toto Wolff's recent criticism of Mercedes' technical staff known.
In an appearance on the Formula For Success podcast alongside former Grand Prix winner David Coulthard, Jordan called out Wolff's "disingenuous and crass" remarks about the team's performance at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
After a lackluster 2022 season that saw the team secure just one victory, Mercedes was eager to make a comeback this year. However, their hopes were dashed in Sakhir as George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualified over half a second slower than Max Verstappen's pole position lap.
Wolff was quick to admit the team had taken the wrong development path with the W14, describing race day in Bahrain as "one of the worst days [of] racing" and ordering sweeping changes to the car.
But Jordan isn't buying Wolff's attempts to shift the blame onto the team's designers, and he's calling on the CEO to step up and take responsibility. Jordan said:
"He’s the CEO, he’s the boss. The buck stops with him. This is happening under his watch.
“To blame or criticise anybody in his design team is actually disingenuous. It’s really crass."
Jordan wants to see Wolff own up to the team's failures and pledge to come back stronger in the future. He added:
"I hate to hear that, because he must be a man, stand up and take it on the chin and say, 'my team, my people, we have failed to get the job successfully done at this moment. However, there are times ahead that we're looking forward to and we will be there much stronger than we were in 2022.'
"I think that Toto is strong enough, big enough and man enough to front this up and actually sort it out."
With a whopping 23 races on the calendar this season, there's still plenty of time for Mercedes to make up lost ground. But Coulthard warns that the competition won't be standing still, either. Coulthard explained:
"It's going to be interesting to watch their particular recovery journey.
"Twenty-three races in this season [so] they've got more races than at any time in history to try and win things back but development doesn't stop for the fast teams as well, so it is going to be a huge challenge for them."