Mercedes boss Toto Wolff shares glowing endorsement of FIA president Mohamed Ben Sulayem

With the elections for the presidency of the FIA just on the horizon, Mohammed Ben Sulayem has been looking to garner support across the paddock, and Mercedes' Toto Wolff has come out with some golden words for the Emirati. The 53-year-old commended the incumbent FIA President's way of commanding the organization and not falling prey to external pressure.

Over the past few months, revered figures worldwide have asked the FIA to show some leniency on the swearing ban that drivers have faced lately. Moreover, fans have expressed their discontent with the way the FIA has functioned in the past few years under Sulayem's leadership, as he has restructured the organization on multiple occasions.

With the first rival for the FIA presidency making his candidature public, the pursuit of garnering support has begun early in the F1 paddock. But, Mercedes supremo Wolff came out with some appreciation for the way Sulayem has handled the sport till now, claiming he has ruled the organization "with an iron fist," and said, via Motorsport.com:

"You can’t deny that he’s ruling with an iron fist. He doesn’t let anyone tell him what to do. That can have its advantages. I think his stance on swearing is right. Many of the drivers who scream on the radio don’t speak English as their first language. "If a French or Italian driver says ‘go and f**k yourself’ on the radio and thinks it’s normal, it’s probably because he’s heard it that way since his karting days. But if you translate it literally into his native language, it can actually shock him."

Meanwhile, Toto Wolff has not always been appreciative of the FIA's functioning during his time as the leader of Mercedes.

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Have things mended between Toto Wolff and FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem?

Toto Wolff (L) and Mohammed Ben Sulayem (R) at the 2024 F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi - Source: Getty

Toto Wolff has been fairly expressive of his discontent with the FIA over the past few years. After the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP saga, the Austrian fired multiple shots at the organization, and Mohammed Ben Sulayem was the one who oversaw the whole investigation of the race.

This feud between him and the governing body continued for the following few years on multiple things. Moreover, after the 2024 Qatar GP, the air between him and Ben Sulayem had grown rife, as he called out the 63-year-old's way of leading the FIA, via Autosport:

"I think he [Ben Sulayem] can fire as many people as he wants; as [it's] his organization, he's the president. That's not something that anybody [else] has an involvement... But obviously, what's in the news and the potential spillover in terms of negativity and reputation, that is something that is bad for all of us."

Thus, there's a stark difference between Wolff's stance on Sulayem in the past few months.

Edited by Hitesh Nigam