Toto Wolff explains how life-threatening 189mph crash led to meeting Susie Wolff

A 189mph crash which threatened Toto Wolff’s life eventually led to meeting his future wife Susie Wolff.

The Mercedes team principal has recalled the infamous tale of his terrifying accident in 2009.

Driving a Porsche 911 RSR at the notorious Nurburgring, a 37-year-old Wolff’s attempt to break a seven-minute lap almost ended in disaster.

“The track was different, it wasn’t the new asphalt. It was riskier and bumpier,” he told the Armchair Expert podcast.

“It was crazy dangerous. There is nothing like it.

“I was friends with Niki Lauda who had his crash in Formula 1 there. That’s where he burned.

“He said: ‘Why are you doing this? It’s so stupid. Nobody cares what you do at the Nurburgring!’

“I was in a bit of a mid-life crisis!

“It was on a preparation lap. The car already felt odd, the tyres were falling apart.

“It was an amateur approach. I said to myself, while already knowing that the car had an issue, I am going to give it one try.

“On that one try, the car was up by 15 seconds. It would have been a 6.40 or a 6.35.

“Today a good time is around 6.20 or so but this was 15 years ago, and the track was completely different. Parts that are flat today were not flat, back in the day.

“The car felt odd. I said ‘I am just going to finish the lap’.

“Then I had a puncture in the most dangerous part. I was doing 189mph.

“With a right rear puncture I went off into the guardrail. I went onto the roof. I didn’t go into the forest which was lucky. I slid 250m then stopped.

“I stopped the car, it was on fumes. I thought everything was normal.

“Then they found me behind the guardrail with the helmet on, laying on my back, like I was sleeping. I have no recollection.

“With shock and adrenaline, I got myself out of the car. I had massive concussion.

“They found me unconscious. They put me in the ambulance and took me to the local hospital, with oxygen on.

“The worrying bit was an ache in my spine, and tingling in my legs. I thought ‘Niki was right’.

“They put me in an X-ray. I asked a nurse ‘is my spine damaged?’

“She said: ‘I am not authorised to give you that information’.

“I still had tingling. The doctor came and said ‘you are find with the spinal cord but you have compression fractures, and one of your eyes is tilting into the inside’.”

How Toto Wolff met Susie Wolff

Wolff defied doctors’ orders and flew in an aeroplane (at only 10,000ft to avoid pressure on his eye) back to Vienna.

He was unable to sleep due to vertigo. He lost his smell and taste and when it returned, everything tasted like cardboard.

He had suffered nerve damage.

But it led to meeting his future wife, herself also a racing driver.

“She was on a fitness camp with other Mercedes drivers,” Wolff said.

“I was a shareholder in the touring car team but we didn’t know each other.

“There was a rumour that Toto had a bad accident.

“She called me. And that’s how we started…

“She asked if I was okay. We started talking. It was a half an hour phone call.”

Toto and Susie got married in 2011.