Concern expressed by Mercedes is shared by Sky Sports F1 pundits regarding Toto Wolff’s leadership.

Following a disappointing 2023 season, Toto Wolff has been accused of “reactive” leadership of the Mercedes team.

In the constructors’ championship, Mercedes came in second place, just behind Red Bull.

But the Silver Arrows didn’t win a single Grand Prix all year, and the winners were miles ahead of both them and everyone else.

The team began the campaign sticking with its failed ‘zeropod’ aerodynamic concept, but team principal Wolff acknowledged they had to adapt after just one race.

Ted Kravitz, a correspondent for Sky Sports F1 pit lane, highlighted that as an instance of the Austrian’s dubious decision-making.

“In leadership, in direction, in inspiring the team, which I still think he is the best leader, watching him from the outside,” he stated in the Sky F1 podcast.

“With Toto Wolff, wouldn’t everyone at Mercedes jump over a cliff? They would fight alongside him.

All he does is impart that leadership. Perhaps that is a holdover from the eight world constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ championships from the previous era.

He maintains the satisfaction of the drivers. He retains the sponsors, and that Mercedes team has some incredible sponsors.

The only thing about him that I would criticize is how eager he was to discard the idea so openly following his Bahrain qualifying run.”The reason he was able to sign off on what he did sign off on is a mystery to us,”

Did he exercise proactive or reactive leadership? Was he steering his own team’s course more by responding to events than by taking the initiative? Much of it was quite reactive in the early going since it wasn’t decided to get rid of the sibling [car] before it entered the racetrack.

The slight alteration in technical terms was a reaction.

Since 2014, one of Mercedes’s advantages has been their refusal to chase trends—instead, they carve out their own path for others to follow.

And from the outside, that is not the case right now.”