– The personnel departure at the Ford team HRT is apparently larger than assumed: As Motorsport-Total.com has learned from several sources, the Haupt Racing Team will not – as previously reported – lose five engineers after the season, including chief engineer Laurent Fedacou, who was also responsible for technical management in recent years.
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Instead, as many as nine HRT engineers and trainee engineers, whose training is not yet complete, have signed contracts with a new employer for the 2027 season.
The individuals affected belong to the French part of the HRT engineering team, whose members are deployed in various team programs – besides the DTM, among others at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, in the GT World Challenge Europe (GTWCE), and in the ADAC GT Masters. The restructuring is not to take place immediately, but after the end of the season.
What HRT says about the internal restructuring
Nine departures in the engineering department at once present HRT with the challenge of replacing this know-how. Finding short-term replacements with the appropriate experience is also likely to be difficult, as besides HRT, only Proton currently runs the Ford Mustang GT3 Evo in Europe.
“As announced in our press release of August 4, 2026, we will implement some structural changes at HRT to sharpen our processes and be even more performant and efficient in the future,” HRT team principal Ulrich Fritz commented on the upcoming restructuring.
“Accordingly, we look positively to the future and are convinced that we will take another step forward with our Ford Mustang GT3 project.”
Besides engineers, is a sponsor also switching to the competition?
But what future prospects do the engineers have? After the current season, they are expected to work for a team that is already competing in the DTM and wants to expand its project in the coming years. Interestingly, HRT is also threatened with the loss of a financially strong sponsor for the upcoming season, according to information from Motorsport-Total.com.
Currently, talks are underway about engaging the sponsor with that DTM team in the future as well.
Nine departures in the engineering department: What’s behind it?
But what is behind the restructuring? According to information from Motorsport-Total.com, the relationship between the team management and Fedacou has been tense for some time. The experienced engineer previously worked in the DTM manufacturer era at the former Audi factory team Phoenix as a race engineer with former champions like Timo Scheider and Mike Rockenfeller and has been with HRT since the end of 2021.
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Fedacou also established cooperation with the French engineering academy ESTACA, through which the HRT team has been supplied with young engineers from France for years.
In the wake of Fedacou, according to Motorsport-Total.com, his compatriots Clement Fay and Valentin Planque have also signed contracts with another employer. Fay is responsible this year in the DTM as race engineer for Arjun Maini. Planque works in the DTM as race engineer for surprise rookie Finn Wiebelhaus (see HRT DTM profile in our database).
Performance engineer Julie Schotter and performance engineer Alex Salomon have also signed corresponding contracts. The same applies to four other engineers and trainee engineers from the French group. This brings the number of known upcoming departures in this area to a total of nine.
HRT takes sponsor situation calmly
Motorsport-Total.com gave the HRT team the opportunity to comment on this research as well. However, team principal Fritz does not want to “generally comment on further speculation and rumors – this applies especially in the context of our employees and contractual agreements with sponsors.”
Photo gallery: All Ford cars in DTM history since 1984
Regarding the potential loss of a financially strong sponsor, he makes it clear: “We work with over 15 partners and deliberately without one dominant partner, so no single partnership contract is of a size that would be critical for the company in case of termination.”
Technical structure: How will the Ford team proceed?
The HRT crew, which is in the second year of a three-year contract following the Ford deal concluded at the end of 2024, must reorganize for 2027. Recently, an experienced man returned to HRT from the BMW team Rowe Racing, Andreas Riedl, who according to team principal Fritz was recently responsible for DTM pit stops.
The ex-HWA man, who worked as a race engineer with Ralf and David Schumacher, meets at HRT his former HWA colleague Thomas Strick, who is currently responsible for quality control, operations, and regulations. Both could thus play an important role in the future rebuilding of the technical structure.
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