Mr. Wolff spoke with me about Mercedes, Formula One and his life.

Passion is a good place to start. You are married to a racing driver, and you have a son involved in a Formula One school project making miniature racing cars. Is racing an all-consuming passion for you?

It’s actually not. What I’m passionate about is that you have the business side of Formula One as one of the few true global sports, representing a brand like Mercedes as a partner, and then the brutal reality of the stopwatch always telling the truth.

And the combination of the business side, and then racing 20 times a year, and the challenge and the competition against others — somehow I am passionate about the mix.

So Formula One is kind of “business on steroids,” then?

That’s actually a kind of nice, fun analogy. It is true, yes, it is business on steroids: It is a multibillion-dollar sport and entertainment competition with some of the largest brands in the world involved, like Mercedes, and with the challenges of coming together 20 times a year on racetracks where within a couple of hundred square meters you have your own people, your fiercest competitors, the regulator, the sporting authority, your sponsors, your suppliers; there is no other business where that happens. And then you can benchmark it, every single weekend. And you are only as good as your last race results.

You have shares in this team. Is that something that drives you on as well? Does that add an extra layer to have a personal investment in the team?

That is one of my main drivers. When Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, decided to restructure the team it was because they believed that there are benefits from a large multinational organization for a Formula One team, like resources. But there are also downsides; that multinationals are often not quick enough in this specific environment and that it should also be managed like a midsize company, and managed in a very entrepreneurial way. And when they approached me, it was very much them saying: “This is a condition we think is necessary to be successful. We want you to be a 40 percent shareholder of this team. What do you think about it?” And I said: “Actually it is the only way it works for me.” I have been involved in venture capital and private equity for almost all of my life and developing the team, and developing the company and increasing value — shareholder value — is a main driver for me.

That is interesting because it was the problem in the past with teams like Toyota, Jaguar, and Honda, that the manufacturers did not have that driving factor and direct responsibility for the team leaders — they were all just employees.