17/12/2020
NEWS STORY
Williams Racing has announced the appointment of Jost Capito as its new Chief Executive Officer, the German 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 having been bought by Dorilton Capital earlier this year.
Reporting to Matthew Savage, Williams Chairman, Capito will take full responsibility for the day-to-day running of the company. As part of this, the Grove team confirmed that Simon Roberts will officially take on the role of Team Principal, reporting to Jost.
Capito 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. Capito 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 four-month stint at McLaren, in 2016 he 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.
"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," said Capito. "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."
"We are excited to welcome Jost Capito as the new CEO of Williams Racing," added Matthew Savage, Chairman of Dorilton Capital. "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."