In motorsport, the usual path to management is thus: start out as a junior employee, work your way up, and eventually you can earn the keys to one of the many kingdoms of racing.
There are a few exceptions to the rule, as the likes of new Ferrari Formula 1 boss Frederic Vasseur earned their keep by running their own race teams before earning a move into the top flight. Christian Horner did the same, starting up the Arden squad in F3000 with father Garry to ensure the younger Horner could keep his racing career alive. Eventually, he hung up his helmet to focus on the day-to-day management of the team, which brought him to the attention of Red Bull when it embarked on its journey as an F1 team in 2005.
To make the journey from race driver to team principal is an increasingly rarefied one in motorsport; while ex-F1 team principals who dipped their toes in the ocean with their own teams may have been racers in the past - Jackie Stewart and Alain Prost being examples in the past 25 years - it’s become more of a specialist role in modern times.
Compare that to football, where the overwhelming majority of managers are ex-players who have gone off to do their coaching badges. There’s a smattering of those who never played the game professionally; in the Premier League, Brentford boss Thomas Frank was only ever an amateur, while Leicester’s Brendan Rodgers played youth football before a knee condition ended his hopes of making the grade.
Perhaps it’s footballing management royalty Arrigo Sacchi who summed it up best, having never embarked on the journey to become a footballer: “I never realised that in order to become a jockey you have to have been a horse first.”
Just as non-playing managers are becoming more common in football, particularly as the game becomes more technically minded, motorsport is perhaps experiencing the reverse as top-line ex-drivers entering the management game becomes more frequent.
In Formula E, there are two such examples: James Rossiter became team principal at Maserati MSG, taking over from ex-F1 driver Jerome d’Ambrosio as the team transitioned from Venturi, while Gary Paffett now works as team manager at McLaren under principal Ian James.
There are common threads in the racing careers of Rossiter and Paffett; both had promising careers in F3, before embarking on F1 test driver roles with BAR/Honda and McLaren respectively. Both also had opportunities to race in the championship too with prospective new teams, before their entries faded away; Rossiter was signed up to race with the abortive US F1 effort in 2010, while Paffett was a shoo-in for a Prodrive seat before David Richards elected not to enter.
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They had success elsewhere; Paffett won two DTM titles in a 15-year career in the German tin-top series, while Rossiter had an on-off career in endurance racing punctuated by title tilts in Super GT. Paffett then raced in Formula E with HWA before moving upstairs at Mercedes, while Rossiter was a reserve for DS Techeetah before becoming its sporting advisor.
Now, they’re management types; the white-water rapids they ride these days is done sitting on the Formula E equivalent of the pitwall. Steering a racing car is one thing; steering a whole ship is quite another.
Rossiter has largely found that out the hard way in his first few races in charge of Maserati MSG’s fortunes. In testing, the team enjoyed a confidence-boosting week in Valencia as new charge Maximilian Guenther headed the times in five of the seven timed sessions, but the season proper has been a much tougher ask. Ahead of Cape Town, the Italo-Monegasque squad has a scant three points to its name, courtesy of Edoardo Mortara, after a chastening first quarter of the year.
Regardless, it was a challenge that Rossiter has craved for some time; having been signed up to drive in Peugeot’s return to the World Endurance Championship as a driver, he elected to hang up his helmet once offered a team principal role.
“It was probably bigger leap than I expected, to be honest,” Rossiter told Autosport ahead of the Mexico season opener. “It was a goal of mine [to lead a team] since the end of 2019. I'm very proud to be here, to be a team principal, and to be a team principal of Maserati MSG, it is a huge challenge - that's for sure. But it’s a very exciting one at the same time.
“[Was it a hard decision to stop racing?] No. It's an interesting one. I've had a lot of, uh, people who are a bit surprised at that! I had a very nice contract in place with Peugeot for another year and a bit, and I was very grateful for the opportunities I had inside Stellantis with DS, with Peugeot, and those things in the past.
“But in stepping away for this opportunity, there was no hesitation whatsoever. It was very clear in my mind that this is a dream opportunity. And I was there from day one on the Peugeot project. Having lived through that as a development driver and then racing the car as well, it suddenly gave me a different insight.
“Obviously the years as a sporting director at DS shaped me hugely, the things that I learned from Mark Preston as team principal and from [Stellantis motorsport chief] Thomas Chevaucher, I learned a huge amount from them standing alongside them in the garage. I feel that I'm fairly well prepared to take on this quest.”
In an extensive racing career that’s spanned the full gamut of British circuits in Formula Renault UK, international venues in sportscars and F1 testing roles, and the cast of legendary tracks during his time in Japan, Rossiter has much experience to lean on. In that time he’s worked with many of the big hitters in management, including Richards and Aguri Suzuki, each offering their own styles to absorb and assimilate into Rossiter’s own oeuvre.
But there’s one name whom Rossiter understandably holds in the highest esteem: Ross Brawn, whom he’d worked with during his Honda testing days.
“One of the standout ones was Ross; I was a test driver at Honda when Ross joined,” he says. “And certainly I learned a huge amount from the way he shook up the management of that team, and the way he kept the same personnel, but defined roles. He had a big impact on my early career in terms of looking at how everything should be done.
“And then there's been so many different teams. I'm very fortunate to have had a very diverse career from racing in America, in Japan, in world championships. I think there's something to take from all of those experiences and pull them together, and try to create the dream team.
“He really came in with a very clear vision. And when you come in with a clear vision, you sit down and you spend the time with each person and you see what they want to achieve as well. And then you help them achieve their goals. If everyone's achieving their dreams, then you can end up with the best possible team. And he's shown over many decades that he's a genius at that.”
Even after a tough start to the year, it seems that Maserati MSG is beginning to turn the corner. The pressure was always upon its transition from a Mercedes customer outfit to a manufacturer squad, given its excellent form over the past two years. Qualifying form in Mexico suggested that the team had not quite been able to find the window of the Hankook tyres, and a pair of crashes in qualifying for the opening Diriyah race set the team back even further.
Guenther had suffered a heavy hit at Turn 11, moments before Mortara then slid into the wall at Turn 17 to put more work on the Maserati MSG mechanics’ plates. The TV cameras flicked onto Rossiter’s reaction of disbelief; he was barely able to fathom what he was seeing. Although the Swiss was able to get going in the race as a new rear end was bolted on, Guenther’s front suspension had broken at the tub and required an entirely new car for the second day.
The pitfalls of team principal-ship were thrust upon Rossiter. One gets the impression that he would have reached for the spanners himself had the strict rules on mechanic numbers not existed, but instead, Rossiter found other ways to lend a hand. To ensure his team were fully fuelled for the overnight shift, he took it upon himself to scout out sustenance from the nearby concert concessions stands.
“We had to salvage a huge amount from the damaged chassis,” Rossiter explained ahead of the Saturday Diriyah race. “So it made the process very complicated. It took the guys from when we got the car back after qualifying and all the way through the night. I was here with the guys until almost 3:00 AM, eating hamburgers in the garage at 1:30 in the morning!
“I wasn't sure I was going to experience that, but now I have! And what an amazing group of mechanics that we've got in this team. I couldn't be more proud of the team morale and the spirit and the way they went a Source: Autosport