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Christian Blum

Christian Blum has worked his way through the ranks at Renault Sport, where he started out as a mechanic in March 1985.

Blum says he inherited his love of working with his hands from his grandfather and this led him to begin working in a garage in the suburbs of Paris at the age of 20, after school and military service were out of the way. He stayed at the garage for five years and it was during this time that he gradually developed an interest in motor sport, largely from helping out a friend of his who was in rallying.

Chrtistian decided that he wanted to be involved in F1 and applied for a job at Renault Sport. Much to his surprise he was telephoned early in 1985 by Jean-Francois Robin and asked to go to Viry-Chatillon for an interview. He was hired.

He spent much of the first year undergoing training at Renault Sport and then began to attend tests with Renault's customer teams: Lotus, Tyrrell and Ligier. It was then that Renault announced that it was shutting down its F1 team but continuing with the three customer teams. Blum was seconded to Team Lotus to work with Ayrton Senna and Johnny Dumfries. Blum's first Grand Prix was in Brazil. Senna scored two wins that year and the team finished third in the Constructors' Championship. At the end of the year, however, Renault announced that it was pulling out of F1 completely and so for the 1987 season Blum joined Ligier to look after the team's Alfa Romeo engines. Testing was not very successful and just days before the start of the World Championship Alfa Romeo announced it too was pulling out, blaming driver Rene Arnoux for making disparaging remarks about the company's new four-cylinder turbo engine. Ligier hurriedly did a deal with Megatron. In 1988 the team switched to Judd V8s but Michel Tetu's revolutionary Ligier JS31 proved disastrous.

By mid-season it was clear that Renault would be returning to F1 in 1989 with a new V10 engine and so Blum went back to Viry-Chatillon. For the 1989-90-91 seasons he worked as a mechanic on the engines supplied to Williams. In 1992 Renault was forced to supply Ligier once again and Blum was seconded to work with his old employer for the next three seasons.

The second Renault V10 supply went to Benetton in 1995 and, after six years working with the V10, Blum was promoted to be Johnny Herbert's motor engineer. Johnny scored two wins. Blum went on to work with Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi at Benetton. When Renault pulled out of F1, Blum was one of the staff seconded to Mecachrome but he continued to work with the Benetton team, where he became head of engines in 1999. When Renault Sport announced it was returning to F1, Blum was one of the team and remains with the organisation today.