Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has revealed the reason behind the team’s exit from the premier all-electric racing championship, Formula E. The decision, when announced last year, shocked everyone, as the team found ultimate success in just the couple of years it competed from 2018 to 22, winning two of the seasons with Nyck de Vries and Stoffel Vandoorne.

The decision further meant leaving a championship that claims to be growing at a 20% increment in live audiences year-on-year and stood at 216 million in 2021. Yet, the pullout happened, and McLaren’s Formula E team will replace the Silver Arrows on the grid.

As per RacingNews365.com, speaking with Swiatscigow, Toto Wolff justified the exit by saying, “The audiences were just not good enough. So you have DTM there, and then you have Formula E here, and then you have F1 in the whole room.

“So, we decided that let’s concentrate on doing that properly and put the resources into F1, rather than being distracted and dilutive for the other things.”

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Toto’s statement about the audience not being good enough might have an undertone, as maybe the numbers are appearing just too small compared to F1.

Return on investment was not satisfactory for Mercedes

There are plenty of differences between running an F1 team and other teams, mainly due to the sheer popularity of the premium racing competition. This is probably also the reason why Mercedes left the DTM to enter Formula E.

Despite the boasting of the viewership of Formula E, it’s still less than half that of Formula 1, which spelled low numbers on the profit sheet for the company’s investment and less effective marketing. 

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A Formula E team costs nearly $13.4 million to run in a year, a fraction of F1’s budget but requires nearly as much time and dedication as F1. Banking on these numbers, Toto said, “I think that F1 has become so big that everything else has been dwarfed. We were really happy, successful in DTM for over 30 years.”

He added, “But it has come to a point where the works team, if you wanted to compete, you need 40 or 50 million euros and the return on investment was too small for that.”

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Formula E is yet to find its audience, and its growth has been hampered by F1’s simultaneous rise. Where do you think Formula E will stand in the coming years? Can it reach the heights of F1? Or will it simply remain a challenger?