Story from WRC.com (must be registered at WRC.com to view site).

The Subaru World Rally Team announced today a shift in its management structure. David Lapworth is stepping down and will be replaced by Paul Howarth, who is now responsible for the operation and tehcnical aspect of the team. Lapworth will now take over a new position within Prodrive, working on a new project.

David Lapworth


"I have worked with Subaru for a long time in the WRC and have been fortunate to be involved in many World Championship successes. I have very much enjoyed myself and it will not be easy to move from the Team, however I am confident that I am leaving a very strong technical team who will take Subaru forward to further success in the future. Personally I am looking forward to the challenge of my new role within the Prodrive organisation", said Lapworth.

Richard Taylor, SWRT's Managing Director added: "As one of the founding members of the team, David's contribution to its success over the past 17 years has been invaluable and we owe him a big debt of gratitude. In advance of this move, the team has, over the last four months, made a number of management and organisational changes, including significantly increasing the level of technical collaboration with Subaru in Japan. More and more effort is being devoted to the parallel development of Subaru road cars and the World Rally Car and we will see the benefits of this on both stage and road in the coming months and years. We have a formidable team of people and are very confident that we are fully equipped for the challenges ahead".

This announcement came only a week before the Corona Rally México, where last year's winner was Subaru ace Petter Solberg.

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"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

This was announced as a rumor a few weeks ago, but vehemently denied.

Which is funny cause it sounds like this has been in the works for a while now.

 

'Reading between the lines', David Lapworth was removed because the team wasn't perceived as delivering results under his management. Note how neither Prodrive nor Lapworth named the project he will be assigned to. As much as I'll miss Lapworth's straightforward comments on SWRT performance, I think that considering the money and research that Subaru and Prodrive have invested in SWRT they should have achieved much better results from both cars and drivers in the previous two seasons.

You can't win Constructors Championships with just one car occasionally finishing in the points during a given rally, let alone the Driver's Championship for Petter. Driver's Championship is for one man's ego. The team boss should be concentrating on the Constructors title by ensuring that both cars finished in the points in every rally. That's the only Championship that says Subaru (and Prodrive) is the best in the world of rallying.

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0==WW==0
"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

Now that's what I'm talking about!

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0==WW==0
"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

I met David Lapworth and he seems like a nice enough guy, but I don't think being nice is a strong quailification for being a WRC team manager, their glory days were under Dave Richards who is well known as being a bit of a hard-a$$, and I think a lot of the other most succesful team managers have been more driven than kind.

And I'd hardly call having his title changed to "Director" a step down, Paul probably reports to him, so it might even be a step up in some regards....

I wish Mr Lapworth the best in his new position and I hope to see the team step back into serious contention under their new leadership.