With Head and Heart
Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser has been head of motorsport at
Even his cufflinks mark Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser as a man at home in different worlds. They are small silver sports-car silhouettes, easily recognizable as the Type 918 Spyder. The
Frank-Steffen Walliser has always been a traveler between the two worlds. On April 1, he’ll have been with
With that head of steam behind him, he returned to series production. As the overall project manager, Walliser, now 45, brought the groundbreaking 918 Spyder super sports car to production maturity—and a record lap on the Nürburgring. “Series development is about complex technical processes. But even there high speed and concentration are essential, so the requirements really aren’t all that different after all,” says Walliser of his internal technology transfer. The biggest difference is the highly emotional component that comes into the mix in the motorsport arena, even when the head of motorsport might express his task more austerely: “The key is to establish a technical-organizational ability to win.”
In his new role, Walliser functions as a manager, technician, and tactician in one. Now, unlike his time with the RS Spyder, Walliser is responsible not only for the factory team, but for all
GT racing is
And then there is the business side of his work, for the racing department at the Weissach Development Center also turns out
The task of following in the footsteps of Hartmut Kristen, who after ten years in the position will now become adviser to the board member for development, seems tailor-made for Walliser. “Leading both motorsport and series production at the same time has a very special appeal. A job like mine doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.” Over the winter, he has restructured his department. Walliser believes in team play, and the coach of 280 employees describes the goal for his team in fluent racing slang: “Get the thing flying!” Motor racing is changing; energy and efficiency will play an ever larger role in the future.
As a child, Frank-Steffen Walliser never wanted to be a race-car driver. “For me, the cars in my head are fast,” he says, and it’s still true today. He does concede with a wink, however, the order in which he learned to say his first words: “car,” and after that “mommy” and “daddy.” At the age of sixteen, his professional aspiration to do “something with cars” started to take shape. Back then, working for
Today, suddenly, everything is very close, and he’s in the thick of it. The emotions that play such a special role in motor racing represent no contradiction for the Doctor of Engineering. “A car, let alone a
By Elmar Brümmer
Photos by Rafael Krötz