AUGUST 31, 1998

Coughlan to Honda?

THE annual musical chairs of Formula 1 engineers continues with rumors that Mike Coughlan, the chief designer of the Arrows team, is planning to leave Tom Walkinshaw's team to take up a new position with the yet-to-be-announced Honda Formula 1 team. Coughlan joined Arrows with the departing John Barnard, having previously been employed by Barnard at Ferrari Design & Development.

The 39-year-old British engineer has been involved in racing since he joined Tiga Cars in the early 1980s. He moved to Team Lotus in 1984 and worked under both Gerard Ducarouge and Frank Dernie before being recruited by Barnard to work at Benetton in 1990. In 1991 Barnard went back to Ferrari and Coughlan moved to Tyrrell as chief designer. He stayed until 1993 but then teamed up with Barnard again at FDD.

Coughlan is expected to become deputy technical director at Honda and will probably be put in charge of the design of the Honda F1 car for the year 2000.