Sébastien de Chaunac, Professional Tennis Player And Motorsports Executive

Sébastien de Chaunac is a former professional tennis player turned business executive in motorsports. He previously served for companies like Rolex where he was in charge of Formula 1 activation, and ABB, where he over saw Formula E activation. Until recently, he worked for GCK, a company co-founded by former freeride skier and Darkar Rally driver Guerlain Chicherit. © Sébastien de Chaunac 

“As a professional athlete, you’re very precise in everything you do.”

You’ve been competing tennis professionally. How did your journey as a professional athlete begin?
(Sébastien de Chaunac, Former Professional Tennis Player & Executive in Motorsports) I’ve always been playing tennis since I can remember, starting when I was five or six. I have two older brothers who I followed to the tennis club, so I grew up with tennis. Every year, I was among the better players in my region, but I was never the best or even among the best in France. I went to high school in France without going to any academy or anything like this. I got my baccalaureate, as we say in French, which is equivalent to graduating from high school. I wasn’t good enough to go pro, but I liked it too much to stop playing. Back then if I had stayed and studied in France, I had no other choice but to stop playing tennis intensively.

(SDC) I had a very good friend older than me from the same tennis club in France. He had gone to the University of Mississippi in the US. He told me about the possibility of getting a scholarship there, which would allow me to continue studying and playing tennis. However, my goal at that time was not to go pro in tennis. While I had always been a very good player, I was nothing exceptional. Upon arriving in the US, I discovered the University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss. It was a revolution for me. I discovered a completely different world. The passion for sport in the US is huge. I remember that our college football stadium was as big as the largest football stadium in France back then. It showed how big sport is over there. Ole Miss was among the five top schools in tennis in the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association). I joined a great team that was very diverse, with members from France, the US, Sweden and Lebanon. As I said earlier, it was a revolution for me as I had the chance to play tennis every day like I had never done before. I would study in the morning and then play tennis and go to the gym in the afternoon.

(SDC) I improved very quickly over there. Within a year, I was already ranked number three in the nation in college tennis. I reached the semi-final at the NCAA final tournament during my sophomore and became number one during my junior year. After two and a half years, I decided to go pro, which wasn’t the initial plan. I had played a few pro tournaments in Spain and France after my sophomore year and won a couple of them. In no time, I climbed up to 400 in the ATP (The Association of Tennis Professionals) rankings, which is a different tour from college. I told my parents, ‘Look I think I have a future in this. Let’s go for it.’ So, in June ’98 I turned pro, and my first pro tournament was Wimbledon qualifiers. I had played some tournaments before, which is why I had the ranking to play in Wimbledon. From June 1998 to December 2010, I played professional on the on the ATP tour.

Then you went back to business school, how did that decision come about?
(SDC) At the end of my career in 2010, I was at Indian Wells playing qualies. I knew that I was going to stop. I had a friend who is an entrepreneur living in the US. He came over to Indian Wells with me, and told me out of nowhere as we were walking down the site, ‘I think you should do an MBA.’ I knew little about MBAs but suddenly it clicked. When I went back to the hotel in the evening, I started to look at MBAs and thought, ‘Okay, that’s what I want to do.’ When I stopped tennis, I had three options. One was to become a coach – I thought a lot about giving back to the other players because as a player, I was always looking for new ways to improve, especially from the mental aspect of the game. So that was option one. Option two was to remain within the world of sports or within the world of tennis, not as a coach but in sports marketing. And the third option was going back to school to try to broaden my horizon and look at different things for the future. My father is an entrepreneur, my brothers, my uncles, everybody works in business. Tennis was a wonderful parenthesis but it made complete sense to me that it was now time to go back to what I had initially planned to do. I joined the HEC (École des hautes études commerciales de Paris) MBA without knowing where my future would lie – whether in finance, marketing, or consulting. I wanted to explore as many possibilities as possible. I had two goals: one was to acquire technical skills, and the other was to gain more legitimacy as a businessperson. The third thing that I gained, unexpectedly but which turned out to be a major asset in the corporate world, was the methodology – knowing how to work effectively.

“Tennis is a very difficult sport; it’s an individual sport where you are alone on the court.”

What lessons have you learned from the tennis world that could be transferred to the business world?
(SDC) Tennis is a very difficult sport; it’s an individual sport where you are alone on the court. Of course, you have a team around you, but ultimately, everything depends on your performance on the day. Another complicating factor is that you’re 100% a salesperson because you only are paid based on your results. Sometimes, you don’t even start at zero; you start at a minus because you have to cover your expenses to get to the tournament, you have to pay your coach and everything else. This adds a lot of complexity.

“You have to deal with pressure all the time; every match is pressure. I have never felt such pressure in the corporate world.”

(SDC) Throughout their career, professional athletes acquire a lot of skills that are going to be valuable in the corporate world. You have to deal with pressure all the time; every match is pressure. I have never felt such pressure in the corporate world; there is nothing comparable to it. And we have to deal with failure: this is something that people don’t realise but we actually lose every week in tennis. It’s very rare that you win a tournament. So even if you win two or three matches and reach the quarters or semis, your tournament has been positive. But at the end of the week, you actually lose. So you have to deal with failure all the time. It’s a lot of it’s a roller coaster. And that’s something very useful in the corporate world.

(SDC) As a professional athlete, you’re very precise in everything you do. Your agenda is very fixed, with specific tasks at specific times. Attention to detail is key; always looking at how to perform better on the court. But also everything outside of that – from sleep to what to eat, how to stretch – everything is important. I really notice a difference when I’m in the business world with; the level of attention to detail we have in sports is incomparable. And the final thing is the culture of performance. it’s all about results; you have to win at the end of the day to make a living, to go to the next round, to go up in the rankings. So it’s all about, winning and learning how to win. And again, that makes a huge difference in the corporate world.

Your role with Rolex overseeing F1 activation might suggest a departure from the typical career path of professional athletes. How did this opportunity come about?
(SEC) I had a clear plan in mind during my MBA. I really wanted to take that ‘sport tag’ out of my back. Now I realise it is actually my biggest asset, being a professional tennis player. However, back, then I didn’t want to be seen as a tennis player, I wanted to be seen as a business person, like everybody else. But in reality, you don’t want to be like everybody else, you want to be different. At first, I was looking into companies that had nothing to do with sports. I listed some companies and met a few people. However, I soon realised that by doing that, I would lose my advantage. The second option was to work for a company that had a connection with sports. There were brands like Rolex, where I ended, which were big sponsors of the sport industry but which were not sports companies. If that option hadn’t worked, I would have tried the third one which was to work for sports companies like adidas or Nike.

(SDC) At that time, and still is today, the communication and image director at Rolex was a former tennis player. So I reached out to him around October in 2012. He responded, saying, ‘Look, we don’t have anything in our portfolio right now.’ A few weeks later, I read that Rolex had become one of the global partners of Formula 1. So, I quickly reached out to him again, saying ‘I saw that you signed the contract. Congratulations. That’s great. Maybe you don’t know, but motorsport is my second sport, because my dad (Hugues de Chaunac, Founder of ORECA Team) has been involved in motorsport for more than 40 years. If you’re looking for someone for that program, I’d be happy to discuss it.’ He called me back, and I went through the interview process. A couple of months later, in February 2013, I started at Rolex, initially managing only the F1 partnership.

“Formula 1 and Formula E are two very different products.”

After working at Rolex in charge of F1, you moved to ABB for a similar role but for FE. What were the some of the difference you’ve noticed?
(SDC) Formula 1 and Formula E are two very different products. I remember when I started working at Rolex in 2013, it was just when Formula E was about to begin. I remember receiving a presentation from Alejandro Agag (Founder of Formula E), and at that time, we had just started in Formula 1. It was difficult back then to be involved in two programs, and Formulae E was very disruptive. We also wanted to see first how we could grow and evolve. Formula 1, as you know, celebrated its 70th anniversary a few years ago. It has a rich history with iconic brands like Ferrari and Mercedes. Just mentioning the world ‘Ferrari’ is like mentioning ‘Rolex’ – everybody knows what it is. They have iconic events like Monaco, Suzuka or Spa or Monza. So, the Formula 1 brand is well-established. When I started in Formula 1, Bernie Ecclestone (Former CEO of Formula 1 Management) was in charge. He sold the company to Liberty Media. In my last year with Rolex, Liberty had taken the lead. I met with everyone and could see what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go, and they have achieved something tremendous over the last six or seven years. They have really taken the sport to another level. However, the foundations were super solid, and what Bernie had done before provided a very solid base to take it to the next level. Liberty was the right company to do so.

“Formula E is very different, coming with a very disruptive model, and Alejandro has so much positive energy.”

(SDC) Formula E is very different, coming with a very disruptive model, and Alejandro has so much positive energy. I admire him because, he’s coming with new stuffs all the time: Formula E, Extreme E which is becoming Extreme H, and now there’s E1. He came up with a concept: ‘Let’s go Electric’, because the future of not only motorsport, but also automotive, was electric. It doesn’t seem so new now but back then 10 years ago, we weren’t talking about electric cars as much as we are now. They decided to race not on the tracks, but downtown, because they wanted to reach out to younger generations. Again that was very new in 2013! I joined with ABB during season four, when the championship was already more established, it wasn’t a word championship back then, but it was going to become one. When I joined ABB, it was very interesting to try to compare. But again, they aren’t very comparable. Yes, they are in motorsport, yes, it’s single-seaters and now they are racing and some similar tracks like in Mexico or in Monaco. However, those are two different concepts, two different products.

Why do you think they are two different products?
(SDC) The technology is not the same, where you race is not the same, the people you reach out to are not the same age, and the history is not the same. So those are at least four things. The brands involved may be the same, but they’re not looking for the same thing. The budgets are very different; it’s nothing comparable, even though Formula E has grown. But that was something that attracted the manufacturers back then, it’s a lot cheaper to be involved in Formula E than in Formula 1, and the barrier to entry was lower. It attracted a lot of manufacturers, and it’s still the case. So again, very, very different. When I was at Rolex beyond Formula 1, I was involved in all other motorsport activities. We also went to WEC and Le mans – a very different product that talks to different kinds of people. What I said about the technology, the population, the tracks and the history, – those are what make Formula E and Formula 1 very different, in my opinion.

Until recently, you were working for GCK. What are the goals of this company?
(SDC) In 2020, I met one of the co-founders, Guerlain Chicherit, a former four-time world champion in freeride skiing in the years 2000. He later became a driver and participated in cross-country rally, finishing fourth at the Dakar Rally a few weeks ago. We live in the same region in France, in the Alps, and we met right before COVID hits in Europe. I had left ABB a few months before, I was starting my own consulting firm, so I was presenting him what I was doing. He talked about this project as an entrepreneur. A few months later, after the first wave of COVID, we talked again, and Guerlain said, ‘We are ready to go with GCK with a 360 degree vision to decarbonise mobility.’

“Guerlain Chicherit said he wanted to go back to the Dakar Rally with a clean car, which can be electric, hydrogen or anything else, but he didn’t only want his car to be clean or green, he wanted his entire ecosystem to be green.”

(SDC) Guerlain said he wanted to go back to the Dakar Rally with a clean car, which can be electric, hydrogen or anything else, but he didn’t only want his car to be clean or green, he wanted his entire ecosystem to be green. His assistance vehicle should be green, the bivouac in the evening should use green energy. That was really his vision, something that I found very forward-thinking. When I joined the company back then, it was barely formed. There were Guerlain and his business partner Eric, who became the President of the company. I liked many things about the GCK project: the vision behind it, starting from scratch, working with entrepreneurs, the impact I could have as the number two of the company, the size of the company and the speed to make decisions.

(SDC) We had three companies back then: GCK Motorsport, which was the racing team created by Guerlain and serving as the media flagship. Eric had started a lithium batteries company, GCK Battery. Together, they had created a company called GCK Energy to answer to a tender by the FIA, which they won, to supply green energy to the World Rallycross Championship, which was supposed back then to become electric in 2020, (it only became electric in 2022). In the summer, we acquired another one, GCK performance. At the end of 2020, we acquired the Circuit de Charade, a racing track just outside Clermont-Ferrand. Then we created GCK Mobility, our sixth company, dedicated to retrofit.

(SDC) We integrated the companies within three divisions. One was the technology and industry division, where we developed technologies for the future of mobility. We had the lithium batteries and later acquired another company to develop electric engines and hydrogen engines. The second division was the mobility division, with one key feature: retrofitting. GCK is now the leader in France in retrofitting heavy vehicles, coaches, buses, trucks, snow, groomers, and dampers. This is something that the company does very well. The third division was the Energy division, which aimed to complete the 360-degree vision we had. With GCK Energy, we were able to provide green energy, either electric or hydrogen to vehicles. This is how GCK has been operating and continues to operate.

You’ve been involved in the motorsport and mobility sector for sometimes now. How do you think this area is evolving now compared to when you first joined?
(SDC) When I started my career in motorsports in 2013, there was barely anything about this related to Electric racing as Formula E had not even started. Because Rolex is a big sponsor, we were receiving a lot of projects, with people wanting to build electric cars, and others wanting to build hydrogen cars and such. Very early on, we heard about green GT, which was building the hydrogen car for the race in Le Mans. These were things that I saw coming very early at Rolex. But up until, I would say, 2018-2019, there was very little about it. Formula E really took it to the next level and established itself.

“By 2027, they aim to have hydrogen vehicles racing in Le Mans. There has been a lot of evolution over the years; when I started, there was barely anything, it was very early days, then electric, and now we are looking at hydrogen and other energies as well.”

(SDC) Sustainability has obviously become more and more important in transportation. This is in parallel with the evolution of society, where we are becoming more aware of what we have created, and the need to evolve towards greater sustainability. Motorsport is following that trend, and sometimes even pushing it. Motorsport and automotive, in general, have been very innovative, though not always as quick as we would like to be. Now, by 2027, they aim to have hydrogen vehicles racing in Le Mans. There has been a lot of evolution over the years; when I started, there was barely anything, it was very early days, then electric, and now we are looking at hydrogen and other energies as well. People are being very innovative, so we can see that the trend is really towards going green and sustainable.

“The first thing I would tell them is to follow their instinct. I trust my instinct.”

We now see many of professional athletes expanding their careers outside the field of sports. And often, it is not easy. What advice do you have personally?
(SDC) Definitely, the first thing I would tell them is to follow their instinct. I trust my instinct. I read a quote from Mike Horn yesterday that said, ‘Don’t ask yourself 100% of the questions before doing something. Don’t look for 100% of the answers. If you have 5% of the answers, that’s enough to go ahead. And you will find out about the remaining 95% on the way. But if you try to get all the answers beforehand, you’ll never going to move.” This is something that I believe in. If you think it’s the right way, go for it. Obviously there will be difficulties along the way, unexpected things. But that’s how you learn. Every time you start something new, there is a change, there is some unknown. You have to accept that. My tennis career was helpful for that because in tennis every week is different. There are unknowns almost every day, you play different opponents, and the weather can be vary from windy to sunny to rainy, so you have to adapt all the time.

(SDC) But one thing you have to be very clear about is, ‘Am I ready to be sitting behind a desk all day when I’ve been outside or running around all the time?’ So I think there is self-reflection to consider. Is that really what I want to do? Because that’s definitely going to be different. Take time to think just about it. If you invest money and time in your MBA, for example, and then in looking for a job and getting there, and it turned out to be completely different from what you expected – maybe you thought you should have been a tennis coach from the beginning – then it’s a little too late, and you have wasted money, energy, and time. And the last point is, try to do something that you like. That’s really a key point. Working for a watch brand like Rolex or Formula 1 is obviously, on paper, a dream job. But more than that, I genuinely like the product. Find something that you like because life is too short to be working on something that you don’t really like.

What’s your goals for this year and coming years?
(SDC) I left GCK in December after three and a half years. It was a very exciting project, and I had very good relationships there. However, I felt it was the right time for me to move on. I’m 46 years old now. As a tennis player, I was my own boss, I was independent. I wanted to go to the corporate world that’s why I went back to school and did my MBA. I think for me, the next step is to lead either my own company or to lead a company. I’m looking at a C-level role, and I think the best way for me to do that is to acquire a company. Nothing huge, I’m not going to acquire companies like Rolex or ABB. I’m looking at small companies, preferably in the fields that interest me, such as sports, luxury, motorsport, green mobility and energy transition. This is what I’m working on, reaching out to potential sellers to explore possibilities. It’s a long process, so we’ll see where it takes me, but this is something that I’m very excited about.