Porsche’s former head of factory motorsport will join Multimatic Special Vehicle Operations (MSVO) to focus on its high-performance vehicle development and motorsports programmes
Multimatic has appointed Pascal Zurlinden as director of performance engineering at its Multimatic Special Vehicle Operations (MSVO) division. The MVSO group specialises in developing high-performance vehicles, motorsports engineering and competition operations.
Zurlinden, an automotive engineer, is a good fit for MVSO as he joins Multimatic from Porsche, where he helped the team achieve motorsport success in recent years. He will begin his new role on 1st March 2022.
Zurlinden will report directly to the EVP of MSVO, Larry Holt, who said: “We have worked with, and competed against, Pascal over the years and he has proven to be an outstanding technical partner as well as a tough adversary when we ran the Ford GT head-to-head against the Porsche 911 RSR. He is a highly skilled motorsport engineer with an extremely strong intuitive feel for race craft and a great approach to leading a team when subjected to the high pressure of competition. We are extremely fortunate to be able to have him join the MSVO team. As partners with Porsche on a number of motorsports programmes it can only enhance both companies to keep Pascal in the fold.”
Zurlinden was a key figure in establishing the development processes for Porsche and Audi LMDh race cars, for which Multimatic is the “spine” (chassis) constructor partner. His knowledge in that area will therefore still be exclusively available to Porsche and Audi.
Zurlinden’s background
Whilst studying and after obtaining a master’s degree in motorsport engineering & management from Cranfield University in the UK, Zurlinden gained experience as an engineer across several race categories, from single-seaters to DTM, before joining Audi Sport in 2008.
The 39 year-old Frenchman first joined Porsche in 2014, working as an engineer on its LMP1 programme, then took on the factory GT programme where his leadership took Porsche to success in all of the blue riband GT races across the world. He assumed responsibility for all Porsche factory racing from 2019 onwards.
Zurlinden stated, “I am really looking forward to my new job and want to thank Larry and Multimatic for the trust they have placed in me. Of course, I’ve been following Multimatic in motorsport and outside this field for many years as a competitor and/or partner, and it’s something special for me to play a leading role in continuing the company’s success story on and off the race tracks.”
