The new CEO of Caterham F1 is Frenchman Cyril Abiteboul, a 35-year-old who is seen as being one of young high flyers at Renault. Educated at the prestigious Lycée Carnot and Lycée Chaptal high schools in Paris, both well known for preparing the best and birghtest youngsters for France’s Grandes Ecoles. To put that into perspective it should be noted that the Lycée Carnot was where Jacques Chirac, the former French President, studied while his successor Nicolas Sarkozy attended the Lycée Chaptal. He went on to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Informatique Mathématiques Appliquées, graduating in 2001 when he joined Renault at Boulogne-Billancourt. At the start of 2007 he was appointed the Business Development Manager of Renault F1 Team, for a two-year period. He then returned to Renault mainstream until March 2010 when he was named executive director of Renault Sport F1 in the Spring of 2010 and was promoted to Deputy Managing Director a year ago.
I should have left Goodyear Dunlop a long time ago, and should have moved to Renault then… At least my current employer has a sticker on the Caterham car
Does this move not strike you as very odd?
A career Frenchman, who is 2IC at Renault, is “poached” by minnows Caterham.
Has he upset the wrong folk at Renault, is this just a strategic, and brief, placement?
Renault bridges burned?
Most odd?
Renault Sport F1 is pretty much “just” the engine supplier part of Renault. I can well imagine they’re delighted, because it surely guarantees at least one user of Renault engines come 2012
Ewan, we are in the Autumn of 2012 already and there’s more than one Team using Renault engines.
And, even if you meant 2014, that’s a very steep price for Renault to “pay” to have a Team using their motor. Makes the move even more illogical than it already is.
Both Renault and Caterham F1 seem delighted, but apparently he will complete current projects at Renault before moving in several months time. I find it a little odd that he is not being locked in the garden shed until he moves, as is normal when team members change teams. He is in a senior position in Renault, with lots of Renault secrets in his head.
Anyway good luck to him and Caterham.
He’s done very well for himself actually he originally started out as the Renault web developer! Very nice guy and very intelligent.
He’s rather smarter than that.
Taller than Sarkozy?
Morning all,
Joe, just out of curiosity, did you take part of the selection process?
Do you not understand the concept of different companies? The F1 team is not designing Caterham road cars and Caterham Cars is not calling pit stop strategy in F1. So, of course I had nothing to do with selection process.
Looks like Fernandes has chosen another young non-racer as figurehead CEO to replace the first non-racer figurehead CEO. He enjoys selecting good looking young people as his sub-leaders. The last guy connected to Malaysian political clout, this guys connects to Renault. Too bad for the factory guys that Fernandes could not find, or did not care to find, an actual F1 pro to lead this complex organization. A 35 year old Frenchman leading Gascoyne’s old pirate ship?
Lack of real leadership – as well as lack of cash – has been the team’s problem. As BBC recently noted, Fernandes doesn’t really care about this sticker on his lunch tin that much anymore. This choice shows lack of real engagement with the true issues. Maybe he should stick to selecting hot stewardesses – which he excels at – and stop pretending to manage, or really care, about this F1 team.