Reshuffle at McLaren: Engineers revealed
By Karl King
January 11 2010
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes today announced via their website that there will be a reshuffle in their race engineering teams. Lewis Hamilton's old race engineer Phil Prew will now become the team's principal race engineer, working on both sides of the garage to facilitate the sharing of information and ensuring both drivers exploit the full potential of the car.
Replacing Prew in his role as Lewis's engineer is Andy Latham. The 31 year old joined McLaren in 2000 and has worked for the last two years as a test engineer. He also has experience as assistant test engineer and assistant race engineer for Raikkonen and Alonso.
Taking on the same role for Button is Jakob Andreason. He, again, is new to the role of race engineer after spending the last four years as an assistant race engineer within the team. Andreason, 39, joined McLaren in 2001 and has also worked as a test engineer.
The following Q&A session with Jonathan Neale, MD of McLaren Racing explains more and was sourced from McLaren's website.
Jonathan Neale, managing director, McLaren Racing
How are you preparing for Jenson Button’s arrival at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes?
“When Jenson visited MTC, one of the questions he asked was, ‘Is this Lewis’s team?’ and the answer was ‘Yes, of course it’s Lewis’s team… as it was Heikki Kovalainen’s team, Fernando Alonso’s team, Juan Pablo Montoya’s, and Kimi Raikkonen’s. And it will be your team as well.
“Is this Lewis’s team to the exclusion of any other high-performance driver? Absolutely not. At Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, we love winning drivers – and we want to go about telling the world that story.”
So what prompted the reshuffle in race engineering?
“Several reasons: firstly, we felt it was the right time. Both our current race engineers, Phil Prew [Lewis Hamilton] and Mark Slade [Heikki Kovalainen], have been the team’s race engineers for more than 15 years. We’ve now got a number of very good people who are trained and ready to go – and we want to give them the platform from which they can make their experience and expertise really count.”
“We also want to build an engineering team around Jenson, in exactly the same way we did with Lewis back in 2007. We want to create a strong group of individuals who can bring out the best in Jenson’s naturally smooth style.
“Additionally, we’re very keen to keep on developing our organisation. We’ve seen huge developments in aerodynamics, engineering and manufacturing throughout the team, and we are taking the reduction in trackside staff as an opportunity to strengthen race engineering.
“With the resource restriction agreement affecting the number of personnel we’ll bring to the races this year, we also saw this as an ideal opportunity to look at how the process works and to make some changes accordingly.”
When did the process start?
“We’d been looking at it since the end of the season, but, naturally, weren’t making any decisions in race engineering until we’d finalised our driver line-up. Now that we have Jenson confirmed to drive alongside Lewis, we want to make absolutely sure we can do an equal job for both drivers.
“To help facilitate this, Phil Prew, who has been Lewis’s race engineer for the past few years, is going to take on a new role as the team’s principal race engineer. He’ll travel to every race and will manage the set-up, development, and sharing of data and information between both race engineering teams.”
With Phil taking on a new role, how will the race engineering team be reconfigured?
“The race engineering team on Lewis’s car will be headed by Andy Latham, with Mark Temple as his performance engineer. On Jenson’s side, Jakob Andreasen – a very experienced engineer who has worked alongside Phil on Lewis’s car for the last few years – will be the race engineer. Dave Robson, who’s also very experienced, will be Jenson’s performance engineer. We’re giving both drivers a fresh engineering team, with Phil as the bridge between them both.”
Does Phil’s role ensure greater parity between the drivers?
“It does – but it’s primarily to ensure there’s total transfer in the learning of set-up development. It gives us a figurehead and a go-to person for the rest of the organisation across the race weekend, so they can ask Phil: ‘What’s happening with set-up? Which way are we going?’
“We can also better use the simulation team and the engineers back at the McLaren Technology Centre to say to Phil: ‘You might want to try this,’ and Phil can supervise that flow of information.”
Does the reshuffle suggest there was a hole that needed filling in race engineering?
“I think it’s more that the opportunity of a new driver, plus the rethinking required by the resource restriction agreement, comes at a very good time for us. It enabled us to ask ourselves: ‘How are we going to best do this?’
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Just when you thought it was all sorted out!..
Race Engineers:
Jenson = Jakob Andreason (isnt he in biathlon?)
Lewis = Andy Latham
Phil Prew => principal race engineer
Mark Slade => ????
Is this a wise move??
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010:01:11:17:41:13 by F1MP I.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010:01:11:17:34:51 by Kinger.
After the problems Jenson had last year with tyre-warming issues, I was thinking that he might be better off with a very experienced guy like Mark Slade.
plus with the front tires being thinner, they should slide a little more, again producing more heat.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010:01:11:18:47:24 by Barn.
Last year in Germany, the Brawns ran a 3-stop strategy because the tyres were not warming up.
Que the 'he will sway towards lewis' brigade.
regards tt
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Puff Puff Pass!!!!
Amazing what a difference a year makes.
At the beginning of the 2010 Season, most people were predicting irreconcilable friction between new arrival Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren team.
They weren't exactly right, were they? By the end of the Season the easy cameraderie between Button and Hamilton had become legendary. What happened? Martin Whitmarsh and Co said they were restructuring, and the creation of a brand new Principal Race Engineer post (Phil Prew) seems to have had quite a lot to do with it. Even if they didn't have the fastest car on the circuit McLaren had the strongest team. The final race where the two English guys came in second and third said it all : three world champions on the final rostrum. If McLaren get the car right, and faster in 2011 the rest of the grid can just sit back and watch.
Though I suppose so would a Mansell and Stewart pairing.
"When you talk, you are repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new." - Dalai Lama