When Toto Wolff could now leave Mercedes after selling a £230m stake in the F1 team

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Toto Wolff has finalised a deal to sell 15% of his shares in Mercedes to George Kurtz in an agreement that values the team at an F1 record £4.6bn, but he retains a 28% stake.

The 53-year-old was previously a joint one-third owner in the Mercedes F1 team, along with Mercedes-Benz and INEOS. But Wolff has sold 15% of his 33% stake in the Silver Arrows to Kurtz, in a move that nets the Austrian £230m and it makes the American a 5% shareholder.

Wolff will continue in his role as team principal and CEO of the Mercedes F1 team, but Kurtz has also joined the squad as a technology adviser and gains a seat on their strategic steering committee. Wolff first joined Mercedes in 2013 when he bought his shares for a mere £38m.

Toto Wolff is unlikely to leave Mercedes before 2030 despite selling shares to George Kurtz

Wolff’s deal to sell a 5% stake in the Mercedes F1 team to American billionaire Kurtz further gives the Brackley crew a valuation that makes the deal one of the most expensive takeover deals in sports history. Wolff would have paid £5.7m for that 5% stake in Mercedes in 2013.

READ MORE: All you need to know about Mercedes F1 CEO and team principal Toto Wolff

The move also now marks the start of the end for Wolff at Mercedes, despite Kurtz’s arrival having no immediate effect on the F1 team’s leadership structure. According to Blick, Wolff was already ‘preparing his departure’ from Mercedes but it is unlikely to come before 2030.

After Wolff joined Mercedes in 2013, he oversaw their dominance during the early years of the V6 turbo-hybrid era from 2014. Lewis Hamilton won the F1 drivers’ championship each season from 2014 to 2020, except for in 2016 when teammate Nico Rosberg lifted the title.

Mercedes even won the F1 constructors’ championship every year from 2014 to 2021, and they will now hope to return to the very top under the 2026 F1 regulations. Mercedes have never been able to get on top of the ground-effect regulations that F1 introduced in 2022.

Toto Wolff rates Mercedes among the five ‘most profitable’ sports teams in the world

Kurtz, who co-founded AI cybersecurity company CrowdStrike in 2011, is the 363rd richest person in the world today, according to Forbes. It cites Kurtz’s net worth at £6.7bn, while it gives Wolff a net worth of £1.9bn (as the 1,557th richest person) prior to selling the shares.

READ MORE: All you need to know about Mercedes F1 Team from team principal to lineage

Wolff believes Kurtz joining Mercedes as a 5% shareholder has shown the progress that F1 teams have made in becoming “sustainable and profitable”. F1 introducing a cost cap back in 2021 meant there is no longer a huge gap between what the top and smaller teams spend.

Wolff has told Sky Sports about Kurtz buying a 5% total stake in Mercedes: “I think it shows a good development, because the teams have become sustainable and profitable. It’s not just some valuation that has been taken out of the sky.

“When you look at our revenues and our cash flows, we are among the five, maybe three most profitable sports teams in the world, and this is where the valuations come from. It has been the work of many years, and the sport being in a good place.”