Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, has confirmed that he will not be in attendance at next weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.

Mercedes have made an encouraging start to the F1 2025 season with George Russell claiming two consecutive third-place finishes in Australia and China.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff to miss Japanese Grand Prix

Russell’s new team-mate, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, has also impressed by storming from 16th on the grid to fourth in the wet in Melbourne before winning the fan vote for the Driver of the Day award for finishing sixth in Shanghai.

Mercedes currently sit second in the Constructors’ Championship with 57 points, 21 adrift of leaders McLaren and ahead of the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari.

Wolff has opted to miss select races over the course of the last few years as the F1 calendar has expanded to record levels, with the 53-year-old’s last non-appearance coming at last November’s Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo.

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The Austrian missed the 2023 edition of the Japanese GP as he recovered from knee surgery, with Wolff reversing plans to miss last year’s race at Suzuka in light of Mercedes’ troubled start to the 2024 campaign.

Wolff has confirmed that he will not be in attendance at next weekend’s race with Bradley Lord, Mercedes’ long-serving chief communications officer, set to stand in as team representative at Suzuka.

Asked if he is planning to come to Japan, Wolff said: “No.

“Bradley is the team representative – and he speaks more clever than me!

“It’s a coincidence that I’m missing that [race] again. It’s not the jet lag.”

In an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com earlier this year, Lord explained the nature of his role at Mercedes, revealing the need for Wolff to share his workload as the demands of F1 increase.

Asked if he is effectively Wolff’s right-hand man at Mercedes, he replied: “On the left-hand side, standing in the garage so from a pure technicality point of view maybe not!

“But there’s a group that works very closely with Toto and I’m lucky enough to be part of that along with James Allison [technical director], Andrew Shovlin [trackside engineering director] and Ron Meadows [sporting director] at the track.

“We’re in constant dialogue about the race weekend and how it’s going.

“So the technical team and the sporting team are in the lead. Toto is not stepping in and trying to fly the plane but observing what’s happening and providing helpful inputs.

“The team on the pit wall is focusing on our two cars and how to maximise what they’re doing.

“We can step back a little more, following what the other teams are saying on the radio, for example, and provide some additional situational awareness, hopefully!

“And my role is really supporting the team and supporting Toto in the external representation of the organisation.

“Be it working with our partners or also with the media to share some of that workload because, as the sport grows in popularity and grows in visibility, the demand to be able to talk about what we do outstrips the availability of one or two people to do that.

“It’s also supporting Toto in his role with relationships in the paddock, working with other teams, and around our young driver programme – I’ve been working, since the start of 2024, very closely with Gwen Lagrue, who is our driver development advisor and the brains behind that effort, and I help to coordinate that programme within the team.

“It’s fun and challenging to be learning about areas of the sport that until now have not been as close a focus area for me.”

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