Russell “very impressed” by new Williams F1 CEO Capito

George Russell has heaped praise on new Williams F1 CEO Jost Capito for his positive impact on the team.

Capito was appointed CEO of Williams in December, officially joining the team at the start of February.

Capito’s arrival at Williams is one of many additions Dorilton Capital has made since taking over from the Williams family last year.

Simon Roberts retained his role as team principal for the upcoming season, while the Grove-based outfit has significantly strengthened its technical roster as it looks to propel itself back up the F1 pecking order.

Speaking of Capito’s early impact on the team after the Bahrain Grand Prix, Russell said: “Jost’s arrival, firstly I’ve been very impressed with him. His motivation and general spirit is massive. 

“He’s an incredibly approachable guy. He’s talking to everybody in the garage and I think it’s incredibly positive news for Williams. In the years to come with the arrival of him, I really feel that we’ve got a firm boss at the helm who will be able to structure a proper technical team around us to help improve ultimately the performance of the car.

“Obviously we’ve not had a technical director in my whole reign at Williams, which is crazy to think about. The priority I guess in my whole time at Williams until Dorilton took over was keeping the team afloat, keeping people’s jobs alive, keeping the team alive, as opposed to making the car go as fast as possible.

“The focus was just keeping the team in Formula 1 which was absolutely the correct thing to do but now the funds are there and we can now get back to fully focusing on the performance. Really exciting for everyone at Williams with Jost at the helm now.”

As part of improving its technical team, Williams has signed ex-Volkswagen rally designer François-Xavier Demaison.

Demaison fills the role left vacant by Paddy Lowe in 2019. 

“I think it’s incredibly important to have a technical director,” Russell added. “Basically you’ve got so many different departments, a Formula 1 race car is one massive jigsaw puzzle, you’ve got to put those pieces together of which a technical director is the one orchestrating that. 

“It’s been very difficult and there’s been a lot of people have been put in and had to do jobs that they weren’t necessarily signed up for because there wasn’t anybody necessarily leading them and they were having to lead themselves.

“They were just doing jobs that wasn’t their role because of the situation. So now we’ve got a CEO, now we’ve got a technical director, these guys can now get back to focusing on their main objective - whether it’s aerodynamics, whether it’s mechanical, whether it’s electronics, whatever it may be - with our new technical director orchestrating and bringing everybody together.”