|
Williams Racing is delighted to
announce the appointment of Jost Capito as its new Chief Executive
Officer, with him set to join the team on 1 February 2021.
Capito has enjoyed a wide and varied career spanning over four decades in
the automotive and
motorsport industries and will now help strengthen the leadership team at
Williams as the company
embarks on an exciting new era. Reporting into Matthew Savage, Williams
Chairman, he will take
full responsibility for the day-to-day running of the company. As part of
this, we are also pleased to
confirm that Simon Roberts will officially take on the role of Team
Principal, reporting to Jost.
Jost began his motorsport career in the mid-1970s, racing motorbikes and
ending up winning the
truck category of the Paris-Dakar Rally in 1985 with his father in a
Mercedes Unimog. After 5 years
at BMW M GmbH, in 1989 he joined Porsche to manage racing programs before
moving to Sauber
Petronas Engineering in 1996 as part of their executive committee. He
subsequently joined Ford in
2001, where he spent an extensive amount of time as Ford Europe’s Motorsport
Director working in
various categories from Formula Ford up to F1 with the Jordan Team and the
World Rally
Championship for the American manufacturer. Jost enjoyed great success in
this role having won
the WRC manufacturers’ titles in both 2006 and 2007.
In 2012 Jost joined Volkswagen as Motorsport Director and led the marque to
a period of dominance
culminating in consecutive Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Rally
Championship titles over four
years. After a brief stint at McLaren, in 2016 Jost was chosen to lead
Volkswagen R GmbH, the
department in charge of the company’s performance cars, but will now return
to Formula One with
Williams.
Jost Capito said: “It’s a great honour for me to join Williams Racing during
these exciting and
demanding times for both the team and for Formula One. It is an honour to be
a part of the future of
this storied team, and one that carries such a poignant name in the sport,
so I approach this
challenge with great respect and with a huge amount of relish.”
Matthew Savage, Chairman of Dorilton Capital, commented: “We are excited to
welcome Jost Capito
as the new CEO of Williams Racing. He is an experienced and competitive
individual, who has built
winning teams and is a winner in his own right. He understands the Williams
heritage and will work
well with the team in pursuit of our objective to return to the front of the
grid.” |
