Susie Wolff isn’t letting this one go. The F1 Academy boss has confirmed her legal action against the FIA is still very much alive, nearly two years after the governing body launched — and then abruptly dropped — a probe into a supposed conflict of interest involving her and her husband, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.
The inquiry, triggered in December 2023 by a media report claiming rival teams had raised concerns, lasted all of 48 hours. Nine of the ten teams quickly issued matching statements distancing themselves from the investigation and rejecting any suggestion they’d filed complaints. The FIA walked it back. The headlines, and the insinuations, didn’t.
Three months later, in March 2024, Wolff filed a criminal complaint in the French courts relating to “the statements made about me by the FIA.” Since then, the public noise has quietened, but the matter hasn’t. Speaking to the Sunday Times, Wolff described it as “an ongoing process” and made clear she’s pursuing it on principle.
“I refused to be treated that way,” she said. “It created a huge amount of articles doubting my integrity. People can have their opinions on whether what I do is good or not. But that’s something I won’t allow to happen — that people attack my integrity.”
Wolff has been consistent: this isn’t just about the initial spark; it’s about accountability. Earlier, she criticised the lack of transparency around how the inquiry began and who drove it, arguing silence doesn’t erase responsibility. That’s not a small statement in a sport where governance and perception now live under a much brighter spotlight.
Her day job hasn’t exactly slipped from view either. As head of F1 Academy, Wolff has turned the all-female series into a visible pillar on the F1 ladder, backed by teams and manufacturers who’ve finally started putting money and attention where the marketing slogans used to be. But the off-track noise around Formula 1 — and at times, around Wolff by association — has a habit of drowning out the work.
Case in point: Christian Horner’s high-profile exit from Red Bull this summer in the aftermath of the British Grand Prix. Horner spent more than two decades in the job and spent the last several of those locked in a cold war with Mercedes as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton staged their title duels. Wolff called the whole saga “a real shame for the sport,” adding that, while Horner had been supportive of F1 Academy, the storm that followed the allegations against him hijacked the agenda.
“We were getting so much positive momentum with F1 Academy and that all kicked off and suddenly everyone wanted to interview me about that,” she said. “He was someone that played a character very well. But I do think that incident maybe wasn’t the best for the image of the sport and showed that we’ve still got work to do.”
That line could cover plenty. Formula 1 is in a period where the margins between spectacle, governance, and brand management are razor-thin. When the FIA launched its brief Wolff inquiry, it underestimated how quickly the paddock would close ranks and how bad the optics would look. When Red Bull’s internal turmoil spilled into public view, the sport learned again how fragile its image can be.
Wolff’s legal case now sits at the intersection of all that. It’s personal for her, but the implications are broader: if a senior figure feels compelled to take a governing body to court to force clarity on how decisions are made and communicated, the system has a trust problem. And trust is the one commodity the championship can’t afford to lose — not with manufacturers invested, driver markets shifting, and fans more attentive to the politics than ever.
There’s no timeline here, no dramatic courtroom calendar pencilled between back-to-back grands prix. Just a steady drumbeat from Wolff that she won’t be boxed into accepting “that’s just how it is.” Whether you see that as a fight about reputations or a stress test for the sport’s institutions, the message is the same: this isn’t over.
