The recent appointment of former Spark Racing Technologies design engineer Theophile Gouzin to an as-yet undefined senior technical position at Nissan will reopen the debate about what’s fair game when hiring in Formula E.
To be clear, Gouzain was a free agent when approached by Nissan after a short spell out of Spark. He was absolutely free to be acquired by Nissan and many will view his capture as a shrewd one that other teams would have pursued as well.
In a similar vein, jumping from one area of expertise to another happens every day of every year in every other industry across the world. So why should motorsport be any different?
Gouzain will bring with him huge knowledge of the Gen3 car and specifically the Hankook tyres, much of which is not available to anyone else in the paddock.
One rival senior team member described Gouzain’s move to Nissan as “discomforting” and few would dispute this just now. It comes on the back of other similar signings in Formula E over recent months.
The most seismic was probably Frederic Bertrand’s surprise move from a senior FIA position to becoming Dilbagh Gill’s successor as Mahindra team boss. Then there was Frederic Espinos’ switch to become sporting manager of Abt Cupra from a sporting director role at Formula E Operations.
Slightly off radar but perhaps even just as contentious as Bertrand’s move to Mahindra was the appointment of Elisa Sacchini (pictured below) to the same team. Bertrand brought her across from the FIA at the start of 2023.
She had detailed knowledge of how other teams operated through administrating the Formula E championship budget and through her task as the administrative coordinator of the FIA Electric and New Energies Championship, which is a significant contributor to the technical roadmap of the FE world championship.
You can’t buy that level of knowledge usually, but you can in Formula E right now if you have the will and foresight.
What we have here is in essence an intellectual property and ethics debate, something that companies claim to take seriously. The FIA even has a ‘hotline’ where you can officially register a grievance.
It covers five areas of misconduct: ethical principles; sporting integrity; anti-doping; Formula 1 financial regulations and Formula E financial regs.
But it doesn’t appear to cover IP and human resource matters. In fact, this is not mentioned anywhere within the guidelines. It is presumed that it is a matter for individual contracts drawn up when staff are appointed.
One senior source in the Formula E paddock, who preferred not to be named, told The Race that they saw the situations occurring in Formula E as a manifestation of teams believing they would get more than they actually believed they initially would in signing ‘gamekeepers’.
“The benefits of being in the motorsport cluster is that there is a high ‘labour mobility’, just like in Silicon Valley,” they said.
“It makes it possible for teams to keep up with the competition meaning no-one gets too far ahead! A little bit like in the Cold War, neither side wanted the other to truly be dominant.
“However the poacher-turned-gamekeeper is quite common as people retire etc. In F1 I don’t think there is a huge amount of knowledge that can go the other way as things are so complex.
“I don’t think specifically in F1 knowledge at the FIA is that high really.
“In this case there are a lot of gamekeepers becoming poachers, I’m guessing because the teams think they can provide the silver bullets for their performance deficit.
“It’s a bit of a shame for the FIA I suppose. Perhaps it is just part of the changing of the guard.”
Of course, we will never know the specifics of individuals’ arrangements regarding their own employment and nor should we. This is a private matter between the employer and the employee. But when the ethics of recent appointments become an issue in a championship that covets its fair play then should it become more transparent in the future?
That’s the feeling in the Formula E paddock at present, as rival teams to Mahindra and Nissan feel a bit exposed. Some will say it’s a fair cop and just part of the natural order of things in the ruthless world of international motorsport where any advantage, fair or unfair, has to be taken on the chin.
But what if the chief designer of the Gen3 battery jumped ship to a team, or the chief engineer from Hankook suddenly rocked up at a race wearing – purely as an example – a McLaren shirt? At present, both of those hypothetical examples can happen tomorrow without any specific time lag, subject to employer contracts, etc.
It’s not difficult to see this subject from both sides of the fence. But the upshot is that if the two aforementioned scenarios are to be avoided in the future then what needs to be done?
The route of ‘gardening leave’ only goes so far. It is what is happening right now with Jaguar performance engineer Cristina Manas Fernandez, who will join Nissan later in the year.
But given Manas Fernandez has to wait to move, how – especially in the present climate of an entirely new ruleset – can such senior professionals as Bertrand, Espinos and Gouzain go from one intellectual property-rich job to another so freely?
That’s the question being asked privately by many teams right now and it is expected to be asked formally at meetings in the coming weeks too.
As ever in motorsport, at this level, there are no easy answers.
Elisa Sacchini image courtesy of Mahindra Formula E team
Keyword: The Formula E signings causing ‘discomfort’ among rivals