Wolff ignored advice Lauda: 'Thought I was dead'

Toto Wolff experienced a heavy crash on the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 2009. The Mercedes team boss wanted to break the lap record, but it cost him dearly. Fourteen years later, the now 51-year-old Austrian looks back on that moment.

At BBC's Desert Island Discs, Wolff tells us he wanted to prove his point. After all, it was said that only locals can be really fast there. Some professional drivers reportedly couldn't even match the pace of the locals. The course is very tricky as well as dangerous, especially in those days.

"So I said to myself, I'll show them I can beat the records. Niki [Lauda] had his bad accident there when he almost died in the flames. He said to me: 'Don't be stupid. Nobody cares about lap time on the Nordschleife. You could kill yourself."

Wolff wanted to set record

During one of his practice laps, he was already (unofficially) faster than the record. "But the car never felt stable, there was something, the tyres were just not good enough for this kind of downforce," states Wolff, who didn't abort his run and still pushed hard. He would have been better off not doing that. After all, he crashed, and badly too.

"When I went for the run, I started the lap and I felt that something was wrong. This is where I realised you need to be a professional, I should’ve stopped the lap and driven back into the pits." Wolff did not and he hit the crash barrier at a speed of about 190 km/h. Several times Wolff's car flipped over before coming to a stop 350 metres away.

Quite a few injuries for Wolff

"I was badly injured but instinctively, I unplugged myself from the radio and got out. They found me behind the rail with my helmet on, lying in the grass. I thought I was dead," said Wolff, indicating he had no memory of the crash. "[I thought] if this ends in paralysis, this was really the most stupid idea of my life."

He continued: "I remember being taken to the hospital and having an MRI, and then I said to a nurse, 'Just let me know if everything is alright with my spine. The doctor said 'You have some fractures, but your spinal cord is unaffected.' That was a horrible 15 minutes [waiting for the news]. And yes, that was the moment I said to myself, never again [to] competitive racing."