SEPTEMBER 28, 2003

Audetto at Renault

Daniele Audetto has joined Renault F1 as business development director and as coordinator of the engine department. The 60-year-old Italian is based in Enstone but spends at least one day a week at the Renault F1 engine headquarters at Viry-Chatillon.

Audetto has a wealth of experience in motor sport beginning in the late 1960s when he was a rally co-driver with the factory Lancia team. After a serious accident he turned to team management, studying marketing at Milan's Bocconi University and at the Agnelli Institute and by 1976 he was sufficiently well-placed in the Fiat empire to be named Ferrari team manager after Luca di Montezemolo departed Ferrari for the first time. After Niki Lauda's 1977 World Championship success Audetto was appointed head of all Fiat motorsport activities. After four years he moved on and became a freelance sponsorship consultant, notably with Ceramico Ragno and Candy before being taken on by Lamborghini in the mid 1980s to be managing-director of Lamborghini Engineering, overseeing the company's F1 engine programme between 1989 and 1993.

After that operation was closed down Audetto went to work in the World Superbike Championship but in 1996 he teamed up with the Power Horse energy drink company and joined Tom Walkinshaw's Ligier operation. He followed Walkinshaw to Arrows a few months later and remained in charge of all TWR sponsorship until the team went out of business at the end of last year.