Andreas Seidl would have been promoted to head of Porsche Motorsport had he have stayed with the German manufacturer, leading both the Formula E and GT racing programmes.
Seidl, who resigned from Porsche at the end of last year for an unconfirmed Formula One role, led the Porsche LMP1 team as Team Principal to three consecutive FIA World Endurance Championship driver and manufacturer championships and scored a hat-trick of overall 24 Hours of Le Mans victories.
He leaves the team for a senior position in F1, which is widely speculated to be with McLaren.
Before his departure, Seidl had been working on restructuring Porsche Motorsport, and it was with this restructure in mind that Seidl would have been promoted to head the entirety of Porsche’s motorsport campaigns. The merger will continue without Seidl, and a replacement for him will be found in due course.
Former colleague of Seidl’s and ex-vice-president of the LMP1 programme Fritz Enzinger will fill Seidl’s ‘Head of Porsche Motorsport’ role on a temporary basis. One of the main duties, whilst he holds this station, will be to find a new candidate to take over from him, running both the GT racing and Formula E Porsche projects.
Enzinger hopes to have this role filled by mid-2019 so that he can return to his full-time role as vice-president of group motorsport, where he co-ordinates roles across the Volkswagen brands.
Until a new ‘Head of Porsche Motorsport’ is appointed, Malte Huneke, once Head of Performance for the LMP1 programme, will be leading the Formula E project, ready for the team’s entry at the end of this year.
