As the Head of Communications for Nissan Global Motorsports since 2021, it would be fair to say that Maria C. De Juana has a rich archive of stories and experiences from the racing world. This season alone, she’s worked with Oliver Rowland, Norman Nato and Abbi Pulling in Formula E and travelled with all three across the globe as the all electric racing series entered its twelfth season.
It’s Race Week! got the chance to speak with Maria at the Formula E Season 12 Finale in London back in August and from that, we’re now able to put a spotlight on Maria in this fifth and final part of our Formula E Spotlight Series.
What does your role look like over a race weekend?
“Over a race weekend it means, well it means first of all travelling to all the race weekends with the team and basically making sure that we talk about all our activities before, during and after the race which means writing press releases before the race, managing all the drivers and team principal interviews and all of the broadcast interviews, all of the external communications and interactions with the media that we do whether it is before, during and after a weekend, it’s just my responsibility essentially.
So, it’s how we communicate, what we communicate and how we have access to people so they can help us tell our story.”
This season then, do you have a standout moment from it so far?
“Yes, I mean there’s many standout moments in every season to be honest because every race provides many opportunities but I think Monaco this year was very important for the team and for Oliver particularly and for me being a part of it was good. The team has had ups and downs this season and we came out the other end of a bad rough patch in Monaco with Oliver winning the race on the last day in Monaco and I remember being in a press conference with him and he was saying, people were asking him are you going to jump in the pool and everything and he was saying yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it. So, I just remember this moment, it’s very stupid things but it’s messaging the team from press conference saying if he actually does what he says he’s going to do, get the towels ready! But you know, there’s a lot of many satisfying moments behind the scenes that you don’t see, that you don’t write about like this, it’s a simple thing of you’re the point of contact all the time between what you’re out there doing with the driver and the team who’s back in the garage waiting for him to come back or sometimes the driver jumps out of the car you’re the first person that he sees, you’re the first person that he meets because he’s supposed to do interviews sometimes as he jumps out of the car when he’s, for example, the winner of a race or he’s in the top three or whatever, you know. And there’s always those privileged moments behind the scenes that you don’t talk about that are actually the ones that are the most special.”
And then, what is it about your role that you love so much? Is it those little moments?
“Those little moments are a big part of it, that’s for sure. It’s the people. But I don’t mean just the people that I work with, I mean the people in general. I’m a people person, I get my energy from people and having the opportunity to talk to so many people at every race and establish business but also personal relationships with so many people around the world. Seeing how you can help people out and seeing how they try and help you out in return to me, it’s so rewarding. You learn so much from just interacting with people, whether it’s on a professional level or a personal level and it’s such a satisfaction to see the goodwill that there is out there.
Of course, I think the bad stuff is always more visible, it’s what people talk about the most but in general, there’s a lot of positivity and there’s a lot of goodwill and I feel a lot of that and I find it very rewarding that I learn something from everyone’s personal stories or professional stories every day. I find it very enriching, so for sure, it’s the people.”
What’s been the most challenging thing this season that you’ve had to deal with but then how has that helped you to bounce back in a good way, like you say, into those tricky moments that will then, in theory, make when you succeed next that bit more satisfying. Is there any example of that from this season?
“Like I said, this has been a particularly good season for that, in a way, because we’ve had lots of ups and downs. Definitely as the comms person, switching that round over, how can we make this a positive? I think what could have been that in the end wasn’t, you know, the trickiest thing and what I think every team and every comms person in every team is dreading is the situation that we had at the very first race of this season, which we had contact between our two drivers and one of them actually had a puncture as a result of that and ended his race. And that’s of course a situation that you don’t want to manage because it’s one of your drivers out of the race.
I felt that the way the team managed that and the way we went about it in a very honest and in a very open way, was managed really well because then the relationship between our drivers actually came out stronger on the other side of the back of that which normally is not the case and we see a lot of rivalries and a lot of not necessarily good vibes between teammates and especially when these kind of things start happening. And I think we gave the guys space to tell their story from their point of view and the team was very good managing that and we were very honest as well as we tend to be. I say tend to be, we always are in finance and policy, in our communications, externally and internally.
And you know what, we generally came out of that stronger so I think that for being the one thing that you could dread the most in any team, having your two drivers fight each other and we generally found a way to come out of that stronger and that’s kudos to all the managers of the team and the drivers themselves and the engineer, everybody was in the same boat here of like, this is nobody’s fault, this is not who we are, we’re going to get to the bottom of this and we’re going to come out of this stronger and collectively we did.
And also you have almost like a feeling of empowerment in a way that if we can manage this we can do anything.”
Formula E Season 13 starts in Jeddah on Dec 18–19, 2026.