The Nurburgring crash which changed Toto Wolff’s career – and found him love

Toto Wolff suffered a terrifying crash at the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 2009.
Toto Wolff’s life changed during a fateful day at the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 2009, when a tyre on his Porsche 911 RSR cried enough.
Wolff had been determined to break a lap record at the fearsome Nordschleife, before an accident that changed his entire career trajectory – and his love life!
Toto Wolff recounts 189mph Nurburgring crash
Prior to entering Formula 1, where he has carved out a career as a hugely successful businessman as CEO and team boss at Mercedes after initially buying into Williams over a decade ago, Wolff had been a racing driver.
Having been bitten by the motor racing bug as a teenager, Wolff cut his teeth at the Walter Lechner Racing School at the Osterreichring, and set about trying to become a professional racing driver.
Competing in Formula Ford in the early 1990s, Wolff’s promise wasn’t enough to progress far – particularly when his main sponsor pulled out in the wake of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger’s fatal accidents.
It was then that Wolff moved into banking and investments, making him a very wealthy man after successfully establishing his own company Marchfifteen. This success allowed him to return to amateur racing in the early 2000s. Having competed in the 1994 Nurburgring 24 Hours, Wolff was enamoured with the technical and scary Nurburgring Nordschleife – and the chance to try setting a new lap record at ‘The Green Hell’ proved too alluring an opportunity to pass up.
Having planned on entering the same race in a GT class in 2009, Wolff picked up the story in an interview with ESPN.
“Someone had the funny idea of trying to break the lap record for GT cars there. And I thought, that’s a fun idea, I like a challenge,” he said.
At the time, the record for GT cars – held by Sabine Schmitz – stood at 7:07 (minutes).
Determined to break the seven-minute barrier, Wolff recounted the story during an episode of The Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard.
“The track was different, it wasn’t the new asphalt. It was riskier and bumpier,” Wolff recalled.
“It was crazy dangerous. There is nothing like it.”
Wolff picked up the phone to three-time F1 World Champion Niki Lauda, a cousin of his ex-wife, to ask for his advice. Lauda, who had famously survived a life-changing crash at the Nordschleife in 1976, was characteristically blunt.
“Why would you do that?” Lauda responded. “No one is interested in the lap record of the Nordschleife.
“Do what you like, but I think it’s idiotic.”
Wolff chose to ignore Lauda’s input, and showed up with his Porsche 911 RSR GT car for his lap record attempt in April 2009.
Setting about lowering his time around the 12.9-mile circuit, Wolff had identified the Fuchsrohre section of the circuit as being an area he could gain a lot of time.
“In today’s GT3 cars it would be easy flat, but back then, in that car, it was not easy flat,” he told ESPN.
“You really have to put your balls on the dashboard … is that how they say it in English?
“You had to squeeze your arse cheeks and commit.”
Committing to his record attempt, Wolff’s lap would never be completed – a tyre on his Porsche failed at this exact section. Wolff had been battling with an unstable rear end on the Porsche before the crash, although the checks on the rear suspension didn’t indicate there was anything amiss. With nothing apparently wrong, Wolff had gone full-send.
“The car already felt odd, the tyres were falling apart,” he told Shepard.
“I said to myself, while already knowing that the car had an issue, I am going to give it one try. The car was up by 15 seconds. It would have been a 6.40 or a 6.35.”
When his right-rear tyre exploded, the loss of control sent Wolff’s Porsche into the guardrail at 189mph where he suffered a 27G impact. The car flipped onto its roof, before sliding down the track for a quarter of a kilometre, such had been Wolff’s speed.
“I didn’t go into the forest, which was lucky,” he said. “I stopped the car, it was on fumes, and I thought everything was normal.”
“With shock and adrenaline, I got myself out of the car. I had a massive concussion. They found me unconscious. They put me in the ambulance and took me to the local hospital, with oxygen on.”
Wolff’s recounting downplays the severity of what had occurred. His racing seat was held in place by just one screw after the crash, while the forces involved had broken many of the onboard cameras recording the record attempt. One remained in action, which recorded him turning off the engine, unstrapping himself, and climbing out before taking his gloves off. Climbing over the barrier, Wolff then collapsed, where he was found unconscious a few minutes later.
He wasn’t in great condition. Still wearing his helmet and HANS device, the 37-year-old’s eyes gave away that he had a heavy concussion – one of his eyes was pointing inward.
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Toto Wolff recovers from brutal accident and finds love
In hospital, Wolff’s condition was assessed and, now alert and conscious, the Austrian was having regrets.
“The worrying bit was an ache in my spine, and tingling in my legs. I thought, ‘Niki was right.’” he said.
“I lost my smell and taste and when it returned, everything tasted like cardboard. I had suffered nerve damage.”
The spine ache led to Wolff being checked in an MRI, and his question to a nurse about his condition was met with the response, “I’m not authorised to tell you”.
“That was the worst 15 minutes I can remember as I waited for the doctor to arrive and tell me my spine was fine,” Wolff said.
“This is when I realised I should probably stop doing these things.”
Initially, doctors wished to send Wolff to a neurological clinic in Frankfurt, but Wolff’s own doctor suggested specialists at home in Vienna. Onboard a private air ambulance, the plane flew at 10,000 feet and lower in order to protect Wolff’s intracranial pressure.
Wolff lost his sense of taste and smell for six months while his torn olfactory nerves reconnected, while he was forced to sleep sitting up for several weeks.
“It felt like I was drunk and the world started to spin round,” he explained.
While recovering, Wolff received a phone call from DTM driver Susie Stoddart. With Wolff owning 49 percent of HWA, which ran Mercedes’ DTM programme, the drivers nominated Stoddart to call their boss to wish him a speedy recovery – Stoddart and Wolff having not known each other at this point.
“Paul di Resta, Gary Paffett, and the whole gang were there, and when they heard I’d had a pretty bad accident on the Nordschleife they decided Susie should call me,” Wolff said.
“So Susie called me and said, ‘Are you all right? Have you had an accident?’ And that was the start of our romance.”
Two years later, Wolff and Stoddart were married and, to this day, are one of F1’s power couples.
With the racing bug diminishing after the crash, Wolff set about establishing himself in Formula 1 as he bought into Williams two years later, before later buying into the Mercedes team – in 2025, he is a one-third owner of the team, an equal shareholder with Mercedes and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Wolff may be one of F1’s most powerful figures nowadays but, when it comes to driving around the Nordschleife, it’s Susie – not Toto – who rules the roost.
“Susie holds the veto and she says she won’t allow this,” Wolff smiled.
“She’s not driven the circuit because she knows what’s sensible … but maybe one day secretly I will go back there.
“I found my peace with the Nordschleife, somehow. This is a story I like to talk about, but my wife doesn’t allow me to say I love the Nordschleife. When I say that she says, ‘No, you love me and you like the Nordschleife’.
“But, to be honest with you, I still love the Nordschleife.”
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