Citroen Racing will enter its second season of Formula E with a re-structured management, as it continues to heal and build after the tragic death of its former Team Principal, Cyril Blais, in July.
Citroen, and Formula E as a whole, was left reeling when Blais died suddenly, with Citroen slowly re-grouping and now picking up former Lola Yamaha ABT deputy Team Principal, Frederic Espinos. He joined last week as Competition Director & Deputy Team Principal and will join new Team Principal, Beth Paretta, who moves in to a duel role as Managing Director and Team Principal of the organisation.
The backstory to how Citroen got to its present management structure is complex, and comes via a convoluted history that involves the Venturi and Monaco Sports Group the former licence holders of the Citroen entry.
Elements of those affairs can be viewed HERE and through the ashes of those episodes Citroen can now look forward to a more stable basecamp of ensuring it can continue Stellantis Motorsports’ tradition of success in Formula E, which has seen it gain notable success primarily with its DS brand.
From a practical standpoint a lot of the day-to-day responsibility for how Citroen enters in to its Gen4 will be cultivated by new hire, Espinos. It will be he who shapes the team from a sporting side at the track in conjunction with Stellantis Motorsport personnel.
“What excites me most about this new role is the opportunity to join a project that has a real chance to win,” said Espinos.
“I’ve been in Formula E for a long time and seen the championship from different sides, so coming into Citroën Racing at the start of the GEN4 era feels like the right challenge at the right time,
“GEN4 brings a lot of unknowns, and that’s what makes it so interesting. Everyone has a new car to understand, new systems to optimise and a new way of racing to learn. The difference will come from how quickly you can understand your tools, how well you operate as a team and how fast you can improve compared to everyone else.”
“My role is really to help all the different strengths within the team work together. I always say the experts are the people around me; my job is to make sure they have everything they need to perform at their best. I will be in charge of overseeing the competition side, which covers team direction, race execution, trackside operations, driver management and more.
Paretta joined the Citroen effort initially under confusing circumstances in May. A large part of her remit has been and will be to liaise with the Tifosy Capital and Advisory company, which is heading the acquisition of interested parties in future MSG investment.
Speaking to FEN last month, Paretta said that she had been “working very closely with them (Tifosy) on a lot of information, a lot of data, current, historic, and then future-looking.
“Hopefully in September we’ll really get to have some conversations and see where that goes nut it’s absolutely well underway. The other major thing that’s been going on here is the restructure of this team, of moving the technical team (from Monaco to Satory, Paris), which is pretty labour-intensive.”
FEN understands that the migration of MSG from its former Monaco base to the Stellantis Motorsport base in Satory is on-going but should be completed fully next month. Former Monaco based engineers are already working from the Satory offices and facilities.
Citroen has also announced TotalEnergies as an official partner recently. The global energy and petroleum company is a longtime partner of Stellantis Motorsport programmes and is also a title partner to the Peugeot FIA WEC programme.
