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Career Spotlight: Meet Charlotte Jacobé, Communications Manager and Team Coordinator at ART Grand Prix
Although the on track action is the epicentre of every round, it’s one of many parts that go into bringing a race weekend to life. Over at ART Grand Prix, Charlotte Jacobé can be found hard at work, ensuring the team runs a smooth operation from start to finish.
As their Communications Manager and Team Coordinator, she’s got lots to juggle. From arranging travel all around the world to managing jam-packed schedules, we sat down with Jacobé to discover more about her many-sided role and how she’s learnt on the job after branching out from what she’d previously studied.
“My work is basically in-between sessions (sorting) all the media activities, team coordination and everything,” she explains. “During the on track session, I stay on the pit wall looking at the race or the session, looking at the screens because it’s really interesting and to get more knowledge.”
Leading up to a race weekend, logistics take up the majority of Jacobé’s time, with the transportation of team members and equipment requiring significant amounts of planning, often months in advance.
Alongside this, she is also balancing creating social media content, liaising with her colleagues at ART and within the F1 ACADEMY paddock and keeping an eye on four other series — who might be dotted across different time zones on the same weekend.
“With team coordination, it’s about booking flights, hotels, catering, overseeing logistics in general,” Jacobé notes. “Also, preparing posts for socials — creating content just before the race, putting (together) race week posts and preparing the schedule as well that we’re going to post on stories and on X.
“I’m also working on different categories on the side for ART, so I have to deal with this as well. It mainly involves media activities, talking to everyone in the paddock, trying to schedule new activities that are coming up and to deal with the three drivers’ schedules and the team’s schedules. You have to be highly organised.”
Whilst studying for your chosen career can be hugely beneficial, it’s not always essential for every role in motorsport. Bringing with her transferrable skills, Jacobé admits that logistics was a completely unknown area for her, but one that she quickly picked up on the job.
“Before my current role, I was studying communications and marketing,” she says. “I don’t think it really helped that much because I started with ART mostly as a Team Coordinator, so doing logistics and I never studied logistics. It was really new to me but actually, communications helped me because I’m also dealing with socials, so it was a really good knowledge (base) for me.”
When asked what some of the best and most demanding aspects of her role were, Jacobé replies: “My favourite part of my job is the people because you’re working with so many different people from such different backgrounds and that’s really nice. I would say the most challenging part of the job is working on different categories.
“You have to be really organised. I’m dealing with four categories, so I have to deal with the four teams to know where they’re going, when and everything. This is really challenging.”
After taking the risk of branching out into a new field of work, she’s relishing all the experiences that motorsport has to offer and despite the tough moments at times, Jacobé says it’s an effort worthwhile.
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“Each race weekend is a highlight,” she remarks. “For example, I’ve never been to Singapore and this is a first. So, it’s really amazing to be able to do all these amazing places.
“Never stop working, work really, really hard and just take all the opportunities you have. I think in motorsport, the main thing is opportunity, so grab all the opportunities you can get.”