JANUARY 12, 2001

Benetton gets more engineers

THE Benetton team has confirmed that Jordan's former chief designer Mark Smith has joined Mike Gascoyne's crew at Enstone. We hear that he will soon be joined by another important engineer as Arrows software engineer Chris Hills has already left the Leafield team and will start work at Enstone on March 1. The highly-rated Hills previously worked with Gascoyne at Tyrrell and then was with Harvey Postlethwaite's abortive Honda Racing Developments operation before going to Arrows. He rejoins a number of other ex-Tyrrell men in the team, including the new team manager Steve Nielsen and engineers Tim Densham and Chris Radage.

It seems that almost all the important members of the HRD technical team have now reassembled at Benetton.