Betrayal of secrets in Formula 1: FIA quickly brushes off explosive allegations against Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and wife Susie

Betrayal of secrets in Formula 1
FIA quickly brushes off explosive allegations against Mercedes boss

It sounds like a story from a bad crime novel. Treason of secrets is said to have been committed in Formula 1. The investigation against Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and his wife is a hot topic. But only briefly. The World Motorsport Association comments on this.

The investigations against Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and his wife Susie due to the explosive suspicion of betrayal of secrets in Formula 1 are off the table. The world motorsport association FIA announced in the evening that there were “no ongoing ethical or disciplinary investigations” “concerning any person”. The FIA ​​pointed out that as a regulatory authority it had a duty to “preserve the integrity of global motorsport”.

On Tuesday evening, the FIA ​​announced that it would examine media reports that a Formula 1 team boss had been given confidential information by an employee of the rights holder. The background was a report from a specialist portal about an alleged conflict of interest between Wolff and his wife, about which other Formula 1 officials are said to have complained to FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Accordingly, Susie Wolff, who works for the Formula 1 marketer FOM, is said to have access to confidential knowledge from the top of the racing series as managing director of the Formula 1 Academy and allegedly shared this with her husband.

In return, Toto Wolff may have informed his wife about conversations between the team bosses, so that this information in turn reached the rights holder. In a strongly worded statement, Mercedes rejected the allegations as baseless and attacked the world association FIA, which had not informed the Formula 1 team in advance about the investigation. “It is disheartening that my integrity is being questioned in this way,” Susie Wolff wrote in a statement on social media. The former racing driver suspected an attempt at intimidation and misogyny as the cause of the allegations. The Formula 1 management said: “We have full confidence that the allegations are false.”

The nine other teams in the premier motorsport class published largely identical statements on Wednesday evening in which they assured that they had not lodged any complaints with the world association about a possible conflict of interest. In its statement on Thursday evening, the FIA ​​saw confirmation that “appropriate protective measures were in place to defuse potential conflicts”. The world association is also convinced that the FOM’s compliance system is “robust enough to prevent unauthorized disclosure of confidential information.”

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