SEPTEMBER 28, 1998

David Brown in demand?

DAVID BROWN, the boss of the West Competition Formula 3000 team - a McLaren offshoot - is rumored to be on the shopping list of several Formula 1 teams for next year.

DAVID BROWN, the boss of the West Competition Formula 3000 team - a McLaren offshoot - is rumored to be on the shopping list of several Formula 1 teams for next year. Brown is one of Grand Prix racing's most successful race engineers having worked at Williams with Nigel Mansell, Thierry Boutsen, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Damon Hill. He was the race engineer for both Mansell and Prost in their World Championship winning seasons.

At the end of 1995 he was lured away from Williams by a highly lucrative three-year deal with McLaren, but after one year as a race engineer on the F1 team he was sidelined to run McLaren's junior team programs. This year he was put in charge of West Competition.

Although he says he is happy in his current role, there is little doubt that Brown would like to get back into F1 and with several teams looking for chief engineers and deputy technical directors there are chances for him which did not exist three years ago.

We believe that Williams is showing interest in Brown as negotiations with current Senior Operations Engineer JamesÊRobinson have stalled, but we have also heard that Alain Prost would like to have David on his engineering team in France.