Have a racing team or performance department you want run right? Jost Capito’s your man. And now he’s returning to Volkswagen.
If the name rings a bell, it could be from any of the numerous performance-obsessed operations that Capito has run over the years.
He started his career at Porsche before managing the Sauber F1 team and then joining Ford, where he rose up the ranks to essentially run all of its European racing operations as well as masterminding the company’s production performance lineup. VW picked him up in 2012 to run its motorsport department, where he orchestrated its recent dominance of the World Rally Championship.
Ron Dennis poached Capito just last year to serve as CEO of McLaren Racing, but with Dennis ousted, Capito was sidelined by the new administration in Woking. Now it turns out he’s returning to Wolfsburg, but with the rally team shut down in his absence, he’ll be running Volkswagen R GmbH (the company’s performance division) as well as Volkswagen Zubehör GmbH (its aftermarket parts department).
With Capito back at the helm, we’ll be watching closely to see what performance vehicles VW will come out with next to join (or succeed) models like the Golf R, Scirocco R, and so many R-Line trim packages.
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