You may or may not be surprised at the level of respect and appreciation that several rival Team Principals have for the current Citroën TP, Cyril Blais.
It’s not just a glad-handing exercise or a soundbite for a press conference. This is genuine admiration for someone who came into the role of TP pretty cold, and who has ridden sizable and dangerous waves on and off the track.
Arriving at Maserati MSG as a race engineer in November 2021 after a three-season stint at Mahindra, Blais soon moved up to the role of Deputy Team Principal in March 2024 after being promoted just six months prior to Chief Engineer. The ascent was dizzying, and in the context of its ownership structure also crumbling, it must have been very confusing too.
Amid it all was a team. One that against the odds was getting the odd win or two, Maximilian Guenther’s brilliant Tokyo EPrix success in March 2024 and then Stoffel Vandoorne’s opportunistic victory at the same venue 14 months later.
Throughout, there has been uncertainty and chaos in terms of who runs the team and even who pays the wages. As experiences go this one was not so much being dropped in the deep end but a deep end that was full of great white sharks and live depth charges.
“For me it’s been an incredible experience, and I’ve been learning a lot in different aspects,” Blais told Formula E Notebook at the Monaco EPrix.
“Obviously, it’s been challenging, to say the least! But I think it’s good that it’s recognised in the paddock as well. Also, the boys and girls of MSG and Citroën, through troubled times, they’ve been magnificent and able to deliver some results.
“With some of the restrictions and limitations that we have you can see the core of this team, and the never give up attitude, so that’s why it’s really pleasing. After that, I would like it now if we can focus a little bit more about continuity and performance instead of having to be in survival mode.”
That shouldn’t be too much to ask, should it? But it has been for almost two years now where that fundamental uncertainty has brewed again and again. The MSG element of the team, which held the license, has been through myriad challenges of ownership and trying to fix itself. At times it has been tragi-operatic in its undulations and bizarre complexities. And it’s not over yet, but at least the team knows that in Blais, it has a kind of dam to stem the washes of chaos.
On the anarchic parameters Blais says “it is always challenging for everybody, and it always costs time, energy, and that’s resources you can’t allocate in pure performance and finding results.
“But this is what we’re telling the team, like ‘look, the hardest is behind us, and then the future is right ahead.’ This is why I mentioned that it shouldn’t be underestimated what we achieve.
“We always want to do more, and the drivers are pushing us more and more. When I fixed the objective at the beginning of the year, I was like ‘ok, Citroën is coming on board with technically just a rebranded car, that we had last year, and the results we had so far have been good.
“How many boxes do you want to tick? asks Blais
“First win, tick. First pole, tick. Podium, tick. So, at one point, you always want more, but you also have to step back and look at what you accomplished and take satisfaction. Because you want to go, where you are, but there’s a journey from where you start to where you want to go, and I think it’s an important one.
The mess of its ownership is still not resolved but recent measures, including drafting in Beth Paretta as the managing director of MSG – with a clear remit to package the MSG element up into a more attractive sales prospect – is at least getting away from the floating uncertainty of the last 18 months.
“Not everything is resolved, but we’re making a step in the right direction, and obviously, sporting results always help.”
So far Citroen have done that mostly. Gen 4 in a way can’t come soon enough for a team that with Blais and his core team, may actually not have made it this far at all.
