A 189mph c✱ra🌠sh which threatened Toto Wolff’s life eventually led to meeting his future wife Susie Wolff.

The Mercedes team principal has rꦛecalled the infamous tale of his te🧔rrifying accident in 2009.

Driving a Porsche 911 RSR at the notori♑ous Nurburgring, a 37-year-old Wolff’s attempt to break a seven-minute lap almost ended in disaster.

“The track was different, it wasn’t the new asphalt. It was riไskier and bumpier,” he told the Armchair E🌜xpert podcast.

“It w𓂃as crazy dangerous. There is nothing like it.

“I ♕was friends with Niki Lauda who had his crash in Formula 1 there. That’s where he burned.

“He saꦍid: ‘Why are you doing this? It’s s💞o stupid. Nobody cares what you do at the Nurburgring!’

“I was in a bit of a mid-life crisis!

“It was on a preparation lap. The car already felt odd, th🦋e tyres were falling apart.

“It was an amateur approach. I said to myself, while already knowing that the car had an issue, I am goinꦓg to give it one try.

“Oᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚn that one try, the car was up by 15 seconds. It would have been a 6🔜.40 or a 6.35.

“Today a good time is around 6.20 or so but this was 15 years ago, and the track was completely different. Parts that are flat today wer🧜e not flat, back in the day.

“The car felt 🌠odd. I said ‘I am 🍨just going to finish the lap’.

“The💦n I had a puncture in the most dꦆangerous part. I was doing 189mph.

“With a right rear puncture I went off into the gua🌜rdrail. I went onto the roof. I didn’t go into the forest which was lucky. I slid 250m then stopped.

“I stopped the car, it was on𓃲 fumes. I thought everything was normal🅺.

“Then they found mꦺe behind the guardrai🦋l with the helmet on, laying on my back, like I was sleeping. I have no recollection.

“With ꦍshock and adrenaline, I got myself out of the car. I had massive concussion.

“They found me unconscious. They put me in the ambulance and𝓀 took me to the local hospital, with oxygen on.

“The worrying bit was an ache in my spine, and tingling in my legs. I t🍸hought ‘Niki was right’.

“The✤y put me in an X-ray. I a꧃sked a nurse ‘is my spine damaged?’

“She said: 𝓡‘I am not authorised to give you that information’.

“I still had tingling. The doctor𝐆 came and said ‘you are find with the spinal cord but you have compression fractures, and ♕one of your eyes is tilting into the inside’.”

How Toto Wolff met Susie Wolff

Wolff defied doctors’ orders an♕d ꧑flew in an aeroplane (at only 10,000ft to avoid pressure on his eye) back to Vienna.

He ꦏwas unable to sleep due to vertigo. He lost his smell and taste and when it retur🌜ned, everything tasted like cardboard.

He had suffered nerve damage.

But it led to meetingও his future wife, herself also a racing driver.

“She was on a fitness camp with other Mercedes dr꧋ivers,” Wolff said.

“I was a shareholder in the touring car team but we didn’t know each oth�𒐪�er.

“There was a rumour that Toto had a bad accident.

“She called me. And that’s how we started…

“🍃She asked if I was okay. We started talking. It was a half an hour phone call.”

Toto and Susie got married in 2011.