How do Mercedes keep “no d***heads” mentality despite F1 slump?

The Mercedes team principal took inspiration from the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team’s famous motto in a bid to create unity at his F1 team, which clearly worked during their dominant years.

But for the past two seasons, Mercedes have struggled to remain competitive as Red Bull ran away with the glory which was once theirs.

Wolff was questioned about how Mercedes maintain their ethos despite struggling, and answered: “Human reaction is when something goes wrong, you want to say it’s your fault. Because that allows us to get pressure off us. 

“It’s something that we actively debate.

“Clearly when things are rosy you can live up to those standards. 

“But sometimes it goes terribly wrong, which happened to us last year and also in some instances this year.

“You just need to remind yourself constantly about that mind-set, and those values. 

“You blame the problem and not the person.”

Wolff explained the responsibility he takes as the boss: “Fundamentally it’s all my fault. 

“If we have a bad pit stop, it’s not because the mechanic has just underperformed, it’s because his equipment is not up to the job, or the training hasn’t been good enough, or the wheel nuts are not how they should be.

“You can always trace where the problem is. It is up to us to develop the person so the person can overcome these tests. That’s why we ran the programme and we have stuck to it.”

Three years ago, as Lewis Hamilton was in the process of winning his joint-record seventh F1 championship, Wolff explained his admiration for the “no d***heads” policy which he believes aided Mercedes.

“We have a sports psychologist in the team called Ceri Evans who is also the sports psychologist for the All Blacks,” he said at the time.

“One of the mottos for the All Blacks is ‘no d***heads’. We took that philosophy.

“We care for each other in the team and I think this is being felt.

“But it’s not all schmoozing. There’s also a way of coping with pressure. It’s a safe environment.

“We have no hire-and-fire policy, we don’t blame each other. It can be heated, and that’s very important, diversity of opinion. 

“But it never leads to a situation where we fall out with each other.

“If we fall out, at the beginning, that means the characters didn’t fit [with] each other.”