JOST CAPITO ON…
HIS CAREER PLANS
“I’m not saying I will stay here until we win the championship. My objective is building a team that’s long-term sustainable and works properly. Then I would feel my job is done. I’m not putting any time limit on it, but that’s my objective.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF F1’S NEW COST CAP
“I didn’t believe it could work at first, and there are still grey areas, but you have to start somewhere. Without the cap, our new owners certainly wouldn’t have come in, and I probably wouldn’t have taken the job either. I don’t believe it would be possible for an independent team like ours to win without it. Of course, the big teams still have an advantage, because they start ahead on infrastructure. But it definitely helps us.”
PAST DEALINGS WITH SIR FRANK WILLIAMS
“One of our Porsche VIP drivers cancelled, so I asked Frank if we could have one of his. He asked what I would pay. I explained that our principle was to pay nothing but to charge nothing if the car was damaged. Frank told me that I shouldn’t have principles like that. I asked him if that wasn’t a principle in itself. He said it wasn’t, and that was the end of the talk. Luckily, Mclaren loaned us Mika Häkkinen, put one of their sponsors on the car and took the revenue, so we had a Tag Heuer car and everyone was happy.”
SPOTTING TALENT
“Organising the Porsche Carrera Cup and Supercup helped me get pretty good at spotting good drivers. Every weekend, we had two VIP drivers to manage; I must have gone through at least 100 in four years. Seeing how the best of them beat their rivals mentally and bonded with the team made it pretty clear who was going to do the best job.”
THE RELATIVE SKILL OF F1 AND WRC DRIVERS
“I don’t make the difference. In F1, you have to do exactly the same thing, to get better by thousandths of a second. In rallying, you have to adapt to different situations, which is quite different. It helps to be older as a rally driver, too. You need to know the surfaces, the effect of altitude and how to adapt to rain, snow, sand and mud. That takes experience. Mind you, that Kimi Räikkönen was able to excel at both shows his extraordinary talent.”