About Us.

Rupert Snr’s career started at Surtees F1 in 1977 where his passion for racing took him from back-office draughtsman to Assistant Team Manager on the race team within two years. Brabham came calling and there he enjoyed 6 years winning multiple championships in the early 80s whilst learning plenty about motorsport working with the likes of Bernie Ecclestone, Charlie Whiting and Gordon Murray.

 

Further assistant team manager roles followed before emerging as the youngest Team Manager on the F1 grid in the late 80s, after taking over from Peter Warr at Team Lotus. After several years working with the likes of Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet and Satoru Nakajima, Rupert was recruited by Tyrrell to become their Team Manager, where he remained until the team was bought by BAT in 1998. 

 

Having progressed from Team Manager to Commercial Director during his time at Tyrrell, Rupert Snr was firmly involved in the financial side of the sport and together with his close ally in the sport Harvey Postlethwaite headed up Honda’s project to create its own F1 team - Honda Racing Developments working closely with Jos Verstappen. However, sadly after Harvey’s death, the project folded and Rupert Snr found himself back in the pitlane with Minardi F1 as Sporting Director, where he worked with the likes of Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber.

 

In 2003 Rupert Snr became Manging Director of Lola Cars International and his motorsport career opened up into other formats of motorsport. Thus after 25 years in Formula One, Rupert Snr has since spent almost 20 years playing an integral role in projects in every other corner of motorsport – F3, GT, WTCR, A1GP, IndyCar, LMP, WEC – and still exhibits same passion he did when he first walked into John Surtees’ office in 1977 to ask for a job (albeit with a bit more experience).