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Toto Wolff has confirmed Mercedes is in “active legal exchange” with the FIA following the events of the past few days in which he and his wife Susie were alleged to have conspired in the trading of confidential information.
After 48 hours of heated speculation and strongly worded statements from numerous parties, motorsport’s world governing body declared on Thursday there was “no ongoing investigation in terms of ethical or disciplinary inquiries involving any individual”.
Its Compliance Department had been alerted to potential collusion between the Wolffs, and therefore a conflict of interest, after an article appeared in Business F1 magazine.
It was alleged that Susie Wolff, as managing director of the F1 Academy, and privy to crucial information from the sport’s commercial rights holder, Liberty Media, had passed on details to her husband, Toto.
Although the FIA has effectively declared there was no case against the Wolffs, Mercedes is now pursuing the matter legally in a bid to uncover the truth as to why the organisation had chosen to ‘look into the matter’, as per its initial statement that sparked the furore.
Refusing to let the situation rest for now, a statement from Wolff, issued via Mercedes, read: “We understand that there is significant media interest in the events of this week.
“We are currently in active legal exchange with the FIA.
“We await full transparency about what took place and why and have expressly reserved all legal rights.
“Therefore, we ask for your understanding that we will not be commenting officially for now, but we will certainly address the matter in due course.”
In response to the FIA statement issued on Tuesday, F1 responded by insisting it had “complete confidence the allegations were wrong” and that “no member of our team has made any unauthorised disclosure to a team principal”.
Demanding swift and full transparency from the FIA, Mercedes said it wholly rejected the allegation in the statement…”which wrongly impinges on the integrity and compliance of our team principal”.
Susie Wolff was equally unequivocal, insisting the allegations against her were “baseless”, and stemmed from “intimidatory and misogynistic behaviour”, and focused on her marital status rather than her abilities.
It was suggested several of Wolff’s rival team principals had complained to the FIA about a potential conflict of interest, adding fuel to the fire for the Compliance Department investigation.
But the nine other teams, in a remarkable show of unity on Wednesday, made clear that no such complaint existed.
