Colin Kolles

Colin Kolles at the 2009 Okayama 1000km race

Colin Kolles (born December 30, 1967 as Călin Colesnic in Timișoara , Romania ) was team leader of the Formula 1 team Hispania Racing from 2010 to 2011 . As team boss, he has already looked after various Formula 1 teams, most recently the Spanish racing team HRT , as well as teams in the DTM , smaller formula series and the Le Mans Series . He has also been running the Team Kolles racing team since 2003 .

Private

Colin Kolles has a doctorate in dentistry and initially worked as an assistant doctor in Ingolstadt before opening his own practice together with his mother Adele, also in Ingolstadt.

Career

Formula racing

Kolles first came into contact with motorsport in 1985, but it wasn't until the early 2000s that he decided to pursue his passion and change jobs. He started out as a partner in a Formula 3 team before founding his own Formula 3 racing team, Team Kolles. In 2001 the team fought for the title with Pierre Kaffer as driver and achieved four individual victories. In 2003, Colin Kolles formed another team that worked with Toyota Racing . In the same year he met the Russian-Canadian entrepreneur Alexander Shnaider for the first time , with whom he was planning to found his own Formula 1 team just a year later. In the 2005 season , however, Shnaider decided to take over the Jordan team and thus also the existing infrastructure. Eddie Jordan withdrew from the operational business and left the field to the new owners. At the beginning of the 2006 season , the Jordan team was renamed MF1 Racing and Kolles was appointed as team boss. The team was sold to Spyker in late summer and the team entered under the name Spyker F1 Team the following season . Kolles remained team boss. After the team was sold again during the 2007 season to the Indian entrepreneur Vijay Mallya , the team name changed to Force India . Kolles stayed with the racing team even after the new owner change; the collaboration lasted until September 2009.

In February 2010, Kolles became team boss of the Spanish Formula 1 project Campos Grand Prix , which was renamed Hispania Racing F1 Team shortly before the start of the 2010 season . In the following two years, Kolles organized the team's racing operations, often using the base of his own racing team based in Greding. Kolles managed to keep the economically weak team in the constructors 'championship in 11th place in the constructors' championship in both years. After another change of ownership, Kolles ended his work for the team in December 2011.

In July 2014, Kolles was appointed Race Director of the Caterham F1 Team . After a dispute with team founder Tony Fernandes over the sale of the racing team, Kolles withdrew from Caterham management on October 24, 2014. Kolles has since been associated with the Romanian Formula 1 project Forza Rossa Racing , which wanted to compete in the 2016 Formula 1 season but didn't get beyond early planning stages.

DTM

Kolles was also the team boss of the Greding- based Futurecom team , which took part in the DTM between 2006 and 2009 . In the 2007 DTM season , Adam Carroll and Vanina Ickx drove an Audi A4 DTM 2005 for Kolles team. After Adam Carroll switched to the GP2 series , the German Markus Winkelhock took over his cockpit. The Kolles team worked closely with its long-term partner Audi.

Le Mans

Kolles came in 2009 and 2010 at the 24-hour race at Le Mans on, with two Audi R10 TDI . In 2009 he came in 7th and 9th overall, with the # 14 car, which came in 7th, being driven by Charles Zwolsman junior , Narain Karthikeyan and André Lotterer , the # 15 car by Christian Bakkerud , Christijan Albers and Giorgio Mondini . In the 2010 race, both cars retired, the # 14 after 182 laps and the # 15 after 331. In 2013, Kolles took over responsibility for the Lotus WEC team in the LMP2 class, and in 2014 for the Lotus LMP1 team. The car arrived very late; the CLM AER P1 / 01 was only able to drive the first race in Austin. Since 2015 Kolles has been taking part in the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship with his team, which drives under an Austrian license.

Web links

• ByKolles Racing website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ message on www.crash.net of 3 September 2009
2. ^ Announcement on www.motorsport-total.com from February 19, 2010
3. ↑ Mario Fritzsche: "Caterham 2.0: Albers as team boss, Kolles as consultant". Motorsport-Total.com, July 2, 2014, accessed July 2, 2014 . 
4. ↑ Dominik Sharaf, Roman Wittemeier: “Kolles & Co. are finally parting ways with Caterham.” Motorsport-Total.com, October 24, 2014, accessed on October 24, 2014 . 
5. ↑ Dominik Sharaf: "The statement in full: Engavest separates from Caherham." Motorsport-Total.com, October 24, 2014, accessed on October 24, 2014 .