Engineering reshuffle at McLaren

McLaren announced an engineering reshuffle on Thursday with Paddy Lowe promoted to fill the vacant role of technical director at the Formula One team.

Lowe was previously engineering director, a position now handed to chief engineer Tim Goss. Neil Oatley remains as director of design and development programmes. The three men have a combined 62 years of service at McLaren.

The team, who present their new car in Berlin next week with drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, said in a statement that the reshuffle was expected to have numerous long-term benefits.

“Paddy will continue to lead our technical strategy in his own quietly authoritative way, but his new role will afford him even greater levels of focus as he will be spearheading new and innovative technical projects relating to our Formula One future,” McLaren added.

Lowe said he and Goss would alternate their attendances at races, with the season now extending to a record 20 rounds.

“It's very important to have senior technical management at the racetrack, because that's where you score the points, but, equally, if you spend all your time away then you risk overlooking some of the hard work that happens back at the factory,” he said.

Goss had previously shared his workload with Pat Fry, who left last year to join rivals Ferrari as assistant technical director at the Italian team.

“Now I've taken on both roles but there's obviously been some shifting of responsibilities within the team as, clearly, I can't do the work of two people,” he said.

“As director of engineering, my role will be to co-ordinate a small team of project engineers who are responsible for the specification, design and development of our cars.”