Formula E drivers pay tribute to 'sensitive and wonderful' Blais

The shock of Citroen team principal Cyril Blais’ death will be hitting the Formula E paddock hard this week. His passing has, in the words of the drivers he worked with, saddened and shocked them to their collective cores.

One of those, Alex Lynn, whom Blais engineered at Mahindra for a season and a half across 2020 and 2021, said that Blais had the ability to change the way drivers thought and handled themselves. 

“He was the kind of man that if you were feeling like you weren't having the best day or not very motivated for any particular facet of your life, you’d spend half an hour with him and you would come out ready to run through a brick wall,” Lynn, pictured below embracing Blais after their podium at Valencia in 2021, told The Race. 

“He was just such an infectious personality. Just a brilliant human being all round.”

Blais also worked with Maximilian Guenther extensively, both in Formula 2 with Arden (in 2018) and at Maserati MSG in Formula E. They had a clear bond and strong relationship on and off the track, each of those aspects very precious to the current DS Penske driver.

"Cyril was a truly remarkable person and an incredibly special character," Guenther told The Race.

"He was a sensitive and wonderful person, while always remaining an exceptional professional. You knew with Cyril that he would always have your back.

"We achieved great things together and shared many beautiful experiences on and off the track. Those moments, and the memories we created, are something I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life."

There is a sizeable collective of drivers that Blais worked with who are utterly and genuinely devastated by his passing. Of course, there is the professional grief for an engineer who gave so much commitment to them and the teams they each worked for. But it seems actually to be a lot more than that. A kind of special reverence clearly exists for a man who did them right, whatever the circumstances. 

“Cyril was very passionate about motorsport, and sometimes in those racing environments where everything can get quite complicated, he was quite good at just having common sense sometimes and like a racing mentality,” said former Maserati MSG driver and winner of last year’s Tokyo E-Prix with Blais, Stoffel Vandoorne.

His team-mate that season, Jake Hughes, was equally unequivocal about Blais’ nature, and his positive attributes both professionally and personally. 

“He would always tell you how he saw it in the most honest and respectful way possible,” remembered Hughes. 

“He was always someone you could bounce ideas off at any time at all. He was just a top human being, and he wanted to win as much as anyone I've ever seen in the sport before.”

Alongside the racing desire, Blais was a very private man. His outward personality was all about the racing. But of course, his life away from the track would have been just as precious, especially when it came to his family, who will be utterly reeling from his sudden loss.

“I hope his family truly knows what he meant to some of us, and because he worked extremely hard, and I was so grateful for so much,” added Lynn.

"You'd message him at any time of the day, then he'd get his laptop out. He was always there for us. It was so rare to meet an engineer who is almost riding shotgun with you in the car."

Blais was a rarity in racing, in that this most pressurised and quite often politicised of sports never changed him outwardly.

It is usually a given that the higher up the ladder people go in motorsport, the more disjointed and diluted they get compared to their pure racer self. It is when quite often the ego, politics and ambition almost inevitably colour a person. Not Cyril Blais. He was an atypical find in that getting to the top as a team principal never changed him. 

“He was so rare because he was willing to take the heat for the driver to help them out, whenever he could,” added Lynn.

“There was zero ego there. You never wanted to let him down because of that, as you knew he would do that for you without even thinking about it.”