Aston Martin's Otmar Szafnauer has explained that his job description won't be changing despite the arrival of Martin Whitmarsh as Group CEO for the company. The former McLaren boss was announced as returning to the world of Formula 1 with Aston Martin last week, with the British engineer signing on as Group CEO for Aston Martin Performance Technologies. Despite Whitmarsh's experience in leading a team, Szafnauer will remain in charge of Aston Martin, and explained that Whitmarsh's responsibilities will be more focused on the Applied Technologies arm of the business. "All those things are still to be worked out," Szafnauer told media, including RacingNews365.com . "But my role won't change. Martin will be Group CEO and 'group' means that we're going to start some applied technologies type businesses, called Aston Martin Performance Technologies, utilising the IP and the developments for Formula 1 and applying them to other industries." Szafnauer said he believes Whitmarsh's previous experiences within the McLaren Group and McLaren's own Applied Technologies will help speed up the growth of Aston Martin's technology branch. "Martin was there at McLaren when they started doing that, so he's got that experience and he can lead us to shortcuts in doing that," Szafnauer said. "He's also had seven years of boat racing experience, including starting a new company that is taking technologies from boat racing and moving that technology into, I think, cargo ships. "It's an applied technology type business and technology transfer, and he's got good experience in that, and he'll help us shortcut the development of our performance technology business." But Szafnauer did explain that he, as well as the whole team, will be reporting to Whitmarsh who, in turn, will be reporting to Lawrence Stroll. "As group CEO, the entire group will also include the F1 team, so the F1 team will report through Martin," he said. "That stuff hasn't been planned yet, so we'll see how it goes."
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