Thursday 19 December 2013

Two new engineering appointments at Mercedes ahead of 2014

The Mercedes AMG F1 team announced this morning that they have signed two key personnel from champions Red Bull Racing.

Mark Ellis joins the Brackley squad as Performance Director, Giles Wood will join the team as Chief Engineer, both will join Brackley in June, when their current Red Bull contracts end. The appointments come as a major boost for Mercedes team as they are hoping to fight for both championships next season.

It is believed that Mercedes may have one of the strongest 1.6 litre V6 turbocharged engines for 2014 so they will certainly be a team to watch.

The announcement is the latest in a long line of new appoints up and down the Formula One pitlane. This started earlier this year when the Lotus F1 Team's Technical Director James Allison left the Enstone based squad and rejoined the Ferrari F1 team.

Ferrari also signed the Lotus F1 Team's Dirk De Beer who the the Head of Aerodynamics at Lotus. Lotus returned the favour from signing Ferrari's Head of Aerodynamics Nicholas Hennel. Red Bull Racing have also lost Peter Pedromou, who is a key member of their technical team. He will join McLaren in 2015 when the Woking based squad switch from Mercedes power to Honda.

Felipe Massa's former race engineer at Ferrari Rob Smedley has left the Italian team. Meanwhile at the Williams F1 Team they have also signed two key engineering figures. They signed Dave Wheater from the Lotus F1 Team as their new Head of Aerodynamic Performance they have also signed Shaun Whitehead from the Red Bull Racing team.

Earlier this year, Mercedes signed Paddy Lowe from McLaren and the Englishman will now take up a new role at the team as he jointly takes up the role of team principal with Mercedes Director of Motorsport Toto Wolff also taking up that position which was vacated by Ross Brawn, who has announced he is leaving Mercedes and will take a six month sabbatical before deciding what he will do next.

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