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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff spoke about the hard time he had during his childhood when his father passed away from brain cancer when he was just 15.
He revealed that his family faced financial issues for a very long time since his father had been battling cancer ever since Wolff was a child. His parents got him into a school in Vienna with the help of his grandfather, which was helpful for him because of the language.
Wolff talked about how their mother helped them through everything to get them to school and take care of them. However, one day, he and his sister were asked to return home from school, mid-day, because they weren't able to pay the fee. The Austrian described the incident as humiliating.
In an interview with The Times, Toto Wolff said:
“But the obstacle was that I went to school in an affluent environment without being a part of it. Day-to-day life was about my mother working hard as a doctor just to afford for us to stay at the school. She might have not been good at motherhood, but she kept us alive; she kept us going."
He further said:
“But it meant that certain things happened to me and my sister. I remember that we were taken out of class when I was 14 because the school fees were not paid, so we were sent home. How do you explain in the tram back home why you had to leave after lunchbreak? It was quite a humiliating experience.”
After facing a difficult childhood, as Wolff described, he managed to overcome the problems and become one of the most successful people in the field of motorsport, not as a driver, but as a team boss and icon.
Toto Wolff found his success in F1 through Mercedes
Toto Wolff was not always a part of Mercedes. In 2009, he was a member of Williams' board of directors before being titled the executive director of the team. However, in 2013, when Mercedes were emerging as a successful team, he was appointed as their executive director.
Wolff now works as Mercedes' CEO and team principal and is one of the major reasons for the team's success with Lewis Hamilton and other iconic drivers. Under his guidance, the team has won eight constructors' titles and seven drivers' titles since 2014.
