Christijan Albers resigns as Caterham F1 principal

Christijan Albers resigned on Sunday as principal of the struggling Caterham Formula One team with Italian Manfredi Ravetto taking his place.

The Dutch former F1 driver, who took over in July when Malaysian aviation entrepreneur Tony Fernandes sold the team, was quoted by Caterham after the Italian Grand Prix as saying he was quitting for personal reasons.

"Over the past months I have dedicated all my energy to ensure the takeover of the team would go as smoothly as possible and to achieve the best possible result for our investors, sponsors and all the people involved," he said.

"As such I worked tirelessly to reconstruct the team while, at the same time, making technical updates on the car. In doing this we created both a better foundation for the team's future and achieved significant improvements on the speed of the car.

"Due to private reasons and in order to be able to spend more time with my family, I will resign from my position as CEO of Caterham F1 Team," he concluded.

Caterham have yet to score a point in more than four and a half years and are fighting for their survival in a sport where the minimum requirement is an annual budget of around $60 million.

Ravetto was deputy team principal and general manager. He worked previously at now-defunct HRT with Caterham's main overseer Colin Kolles, himself a former principal.