Cyril Blais has been appointed Team Principal of Maserati MSG Racing ahead of Season 11 of the FIA Formula E World Championship.
Blais had previous been Deputy Team Principal along with the team’s co-Managing Partner, Jose Aznar, the pair steadying the team’s ship after the shock departure of James Rossiter before Season 10.
The Frenchman joined the team in its previous guise as Venturi Racing, becoming race engineer for FE veteran Lucas di Grassi. When renamed under the Maserati brand, Blais continued in his role, this time for Maximilian Günther, helping the German to victories in Jakarta in Season 9 and Tokyo in Season 10.
In a statement, Maserati described Blais as a “natural choice to lead Maserati MSG Racing into Season 11 and beyond,” with Blais saying:
“This new role represents the next stage of my career and I’m grateful for the belief in me that the team stakeholders have shown.
“I’m looking forward to focusing more on my leadership skills than pure engineering.
“One thing that I learned in my Deputy Team Principal role is that the running of a race team is never just down to one individual, and I wouldn’t feel as comfortable taking on this role if we didn’t have such a strong and experienced leadership group within the team.
“It’s easy to get along well and perform when you are achieving the results you want on track but we see the true nature of things when you have challenging times as a team.
“The strength of character and spirit that the team has demonstrated over the past two seasons has been really enlightening for me and I have a really good understanding of what needs to be done to maintain and build on this.
“Our main priority ahead of Valencia is ensuring that every member of the team has the optimum working environment and resources necessary for them to be able to perform at their best.”
The team will contest Season 11 with a brand new driver line-up, with Jake Hughes and Stoffel Vandoorne taking the places of Günther and Jehan Daruvala.
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