What is going on at HRT? As Motorsport-Total.com has learned from a reliable source, the members of the DTM engineering team of the Ford outfit are said to have submitted their resignations together a few days ago, on July 31. At the center is said to be experienced chief engineer Laurent Fedacou, who has been working for the Nurburgring-based team since the end of 2021.
The Frenchman also sets the technical direction for the Ford team’s other GT3 programs. In addition to Fedacou, who worked as a Class 1 race engineer for the former Audi works team Phoenix until 2019 and then at Venturi in Formula E, four other engineers – all French – are also said to be leaving.
These are the two DTM race engineers Clement Faye and Valentin Planque, who are responsible for Arjun Maini and Finn Wiebelhaus – and the two associated performance engineers. But what is behind this development?
HRT announces restructuring in press release
It is interesting that both Fedacou and Faye were spotted on Sunday at the team’s private DTM test at the Nurburgring. In addition, the HRT team communicated on Tuesday in a mid-term review that despite the upward trend – Wiebelhaus and Maini recently secured the car’s first three DTM podium finishes ever – a restructuring was imminent.
Class 1 experience: Is Laurent Fedacou leaving HRT along with some compatriots?
Foto: ADAC Motorsport
The team, which in the DTM scored six wins and, in 2021, the most recent drivers’ title to date for Mercedes-AMG, is still chasing its first win since switching to the Ford brand at the beginning of 2025. After analyzing the first half of the 2026 season, the conclusion was reached that “responsibilities need to be defined more clearly in some areas, decisions made more quickly, and processes streamlined,” team boss Ulrich Fritz is quoted as saying.
In the process, HRT “will also restructure its personnel in certain areas and strategically strengthen those teams. This gives us the opportunity to focus even more strongly on on-track performance. This is not about short-term reactions, but about sustainable structures and a clear vision,” Fritz makes clear.
Ulrich Fritz: No denial, but restructuring only after the season
But what does that mean in concrete terms? And to what extent does it have to do with the circulating information that five important engineers are leaving? “Yes, people will be leaving us,” Fritz, who is now a shareholder in the HRT team, confirms when asked by Motorsport-Total.com. “However, we will finish the season together.”
That explains why the engineers in question were spotted at the DTM test last Sunday. Apart from that, in this case too there are presumably notice periods that have to be observed.
Fritz does not want to go into specific names of who is leaving the team. “I don’t want to comment in public on who is coming and who is going as long as such a structural change has not been finalized. In addition, personnel decisions are confidential matters,” explains Fritz, although he also does not deny the report.
“The system is not built on individual people”
As the reason for the restructuring at the end of the year, the former DTM boss at Mercedes cites the enormous growth of the team, which fields more than ten Ford Mustang cars in various racing series, in recent years. “We saw that in one area internally we have a bit too much manpower and in another area a bit too little,” he says.
Hardly any team fields as many race cars as Haupt Racing Team
Foto: Haupt Racing Team
Fritz questions whether this means losing key people, because in his opinion, in recent years they have “built a system that is not based on individual people, but on a team. We have always lived it in such a way that we can shift and exchange topics and capacities in a modular way, because we did not want to be dependent on individuals.”
Why so many French people work at HRT
The cooperation with the French engineering academy ESTACA, which in Laval, 300 kilometers west of Paris, offers its own motorsport specialization and provides the team with young engineers, also plays a major role. “We get the people directly during their practical phase – and as a result we have at least four additional engineers per year,” Fritz explains why so many French engineers work at HRT.
After this phase, some of them also move to other teams or look for other challenges. “That’s why it’s clear that at the end of the year we occasionally have a change – and that is certainly the case again this year,” says Fritz.
Apart from that, at the end of 2024 and the end of 2025 HRT also lost two top German engineers, Marius Avemarg and Dennis Nagele, who returned to the Mercedes-AMG environment with Winward and Landgraf.
Also because of the numerous programs outside the DTM, such as GT World Challenge Europe, Intercontinental GT Challenge, the Nürburgring Nordschleife or ADAC GT Masters, the team employs numerous engineers.
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