Mercedes’ Wolff ‘secretly recorded’ and ‘Blackmailed’ amid F1 war (Update)
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| Toto Wolff |
(GMM) Former HRT boss Colin Kolles tried to blackmail Mercedes chief Toto Wolff earlier this year, it has emerged.
We reported earlier that a conversation between Austrian Wolff and a then-unnamed former F1 team boss was "secretly recorded" and then threatened to be used against him.
Bild newspaper had said Wolff spoke negatively about his own boss, Ross Brawn, colleague Niki Lauda, and also Daimler chairman Dieter Zetsche, whilst divulging details of his clashing co-ownership of the Williams team.
A subsequent report by the magazine Sport Bild said Wolff had been taped in mid February this year by former HRT and Force India boss Kolles, in Barcelona.
That report said Kolles then threatened to release the details of their explosive conversation unless he paid a sum of money.
Reportedly, Wolff and Kolles have settled their dispute with the intervention of F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, while Mercedes has obtained a court order preventing the publication of the details of the conversation.
Sport1 said Kolles would not comment, and Mercedes also declined to comment.
The German news agency SID said Wolff could not be reached at time of publication.
07/17/13 (GMM) An explosive conversation with Mercedes director and Williams co-owner Toto Wolff was "secretly recorded" by a former F1 team boss.
That is the claim of the German newspaper Bild.
Correspondent Nicola Pohl reports that the phone call was then transcribed and threatened to be used against the 41-year-old Austrian.
She said the story is the latest chapter in a 'war' that has broken out in the paddock, following Mercedes' ascendance to the very top of the F1 pecking order, and the 'test-gate' scandal.
In the taped conversation, Wolff is thought to have spoken negatively about not only his F1 boss, Ross Brawn, but also the Daimler chairman Dieter Zetsche.
He also reportedly spoke about the details of his Williams shareholding and his clashing duties at Mercedes, and his 'complicated' cooperation with Niki Lauda.