JUNE 29, 1998

Shake-up at Peugeot Sport

THERE has been a management shake-up at Peugeot Sport with managing-director Pierre-Michel Fauconnier being "promoted" to a new position in South America and his job at Velizy being taken by public relations supremo Corrado Provera. Fauconnier has been in charge of Peugeot Sport since he replaced Jean-Pierre Jabouille in January 1996. His brief was to turn the operation into a winning one - which has not happened although Peugeot Citroen boss Jean-Martin Folz insisted that the new job is a promotion with Peugeot and Citroen looking to South America to expand its sales dramatically.

Provera was trained as a lawyer and worked as a journalist before joining Chrysler Italy in 1962. He later transferred to Chrysler Europe and went to Peugeot when Chrysler sold its European networks to the French company - as Talbot. Provera is a member of the board of Automobiles Peugeot.

Fauconnier was unfortunate in that he took over the job when Peugeot was in the middle of a less than successful relationship with Jordan. He negotiated a deal with Prost but the team has struggled this year because of all the changes which needed to be done to transform the team into a sensible F1 outfit.

The Prost-Peugeot deal runs until the end of the year 2000 but the company insists that it will stay in F1 in addition to launching into a World Rally Championship program with the new Peugeot 206 model.

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