Features - Financial
FEBRUARY 1, 1997
The size of Formula 1 Teams
BY JOE SAWARD
Tom Walkinshaw bought the Arrows team in the middle of last year and since then there has been a great deal of changing of the personnel. Many of the old Arrows F1 crew from Milton Keynes have moved on to other teams.
Danka Arrows Yamaha (GB)
Headquarters: Leafield, England
Tom Walkinshaw bought the Arrows team in the middle of last year and since then there has been a great deal of changing of the personnel. Many of the old Arrows F1 crew from Milton Keynes have moved on to other teams.
The process of recruiting new staff has been such that the team currently has one man who does nothing except find and recruit new staff for Arrows. Walkinshaw chose former Benetton team manager Gordon Message to do this job because of Message's in-depth knowledge of the people in F1. The recruiting process is not yet complete and it can be expected that there will be further changes in the months ahead as other engineers become available. With a staff of only 150 the team is much smaller than most of its rivals but it is growing fast with new recruits virtually every week. The most recent have been Tino Belli, Jean-Paul Gousset and John Love.
Belli was the designer of the last Larrousse F1 cars, working with Robin Herd's now defunct Bicester design team (which was known as Fomet 1 and later Larrousse UK). Since Larrousse withdrew from F1 Belli has been working in the United States with the Forsythe and Team Green Indycar operations. He is now in charge of the Arrows research & development department, which includes ex-McLaren engineer Gary Savage.
Jean-Paul Gousset is the new head of the Arrows drawing office. The Frenchman was Chris Murphy's number two designer at Team Lotus but has spent the last two years working on road car projects at Lotus Engineering.
John Love is another ex-Lotus man although he worked previously at Benetton. He is one of F1's most accomplished composite designers.
It is interesting to note that Japanese engineer Taku Takamura is head of Arrows's transmission and hydraulic design sections.
Managing director: Tom Walkinshaw
Sporting director: Jackie Oliver
Commercial director: Daniele Audetto
Marketing manager: Richard Grundy
Technical director: Frank Dernie
Chief designer: Paul Bowen
Drawing Office manager: Jean-Paul Gousset (12 designers)
Aerodynamics: Simon Jennings/Eric Lacotte (a team of 6)
Research & Development: Tino Belli (5 engineers)
Electronics: Andy Rice
Transmission & Hydraulics: Taku Takamura
Race engineers: Vincent Gaillardot, Steve Clark
Chief mechanic: Les Jones
Director of racing: Tony Dowe
Team manager: John Walton
Manufacturing manager: John Love
Factory manager: Kevin Lee
Production manager: Gary Andrews
Media manager: Ann Bradshaw
Windtunnel: Arrows (Milton Keynes, 40%)
Employees: 150
Test team manager: Ken Sibley
Test driver: Jorg Muller
Related companies: TWR Engines; TWR Astec.
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Rothmans Williams Renault (GB)
Headquarters: Grove, England
Williams Grand Prix Engineering is famous for trying to keep the names of its members of staff a secret for fear that other Formula 1 teams will lure away the best men by offering them more money. Patrick Head's philosophy has always been to recruit engineers who have a particular expertise and who enjoy that work and then give them the resources they need to pursue the project. Thus he keeps them happy and because they are all paid at the same kinds of levels there are no jealousies between them. The fact that Williams is winning a lot also helps to keep the staff together. As a result Williams is a very cohesive team with strength in depth in its engineering. Head does not generally recruit engineers from other teams.
It is inevitable that Williams will lose engineers because other teams are willing to pay more for their services. This has been going on for years and over the years engineers such as Sergio Rinland, Enrique Scalabroni, Adrian Newey, Patrick Lowe, David Brown and Egbahl Hamidy have all been poached from Williams. There always seems to be another Williams engineer capable of doing the same job. Patrick Head tends to recruit most of his engineers from outside the sport - from specialist engineering companies and from universities - which means that there are always new ideas being produced at Williams.
The team is also wellknown for holding on to its production staff. Some of the fabricators and machinists have been with Williams since the very early days in the late 1970s. The current production manager for example, is Alan Challis - who began working as an F1 mechanic with BRM in 1958. He had spells at Lotus, Shadow and Ensign before he joined Williams in 1980 and was chief mechanic throughout the 1980s before deciding to settle for a quieter life at the team factory five years ago.
Another of Williams's great strengths is its testing team - which has the same number of people and the same equipment as the race team. This means that staff have the chance to rest more than the smaller teams between races. The only people who do both racing and testing are the drivers and the race engineers.
Managing director: Frank Williams
Technical director: Patrick Head
Finance director: Duncan Mayall
Senior Operations Engineer: James Robinson
Senior designers: Brian O'Rourke, Gavin Fisher
Drawing Office Manager: Dave Lang (20 design engineers)
Electronics: Grant Tuff
Aerodynamics: Geoff Willis (15)
Race engineers: Tim Preston, Jock Clear
Chief mechanic: Carl Gaden
Team manager: Dickie Stanford
Production manager: Alan Challis
Factory manager: David Williams
Marketing: Jim Wright (5 staff)
Media manager: Jane Gorard (3)
Test team manager: Brian Lambert (two car test team)
Test driver: Jean-Christophe Boullion
Windtunnel: Williams (Grove, 50%)
Employees: 240
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Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro (I)
Maranello, Italy
The Ferrari Formula 1 team is not only the most famous Grand Prix team in the world, it is also the biggest. Ferrari employs a total of 450 people on its F1 programme - five times as many as Ligier. This may seem extraordinary but one has to take into account the fact that Ferrari is currently the only team in Grand Prix racing which designs and builds both its own chassis and its own engines. In the coming years Lola and Sauber are planning to do the same.
Even so, Ferrari is huge and the only comparable organisation involved in Grand Prix racing is McLaren which has 275 staff working directly on the F1 project, plus a percentage of TAG Electronics's 110 staff and a sizeable number of Ilmor's 300 employees - although Ilmor is also busy building Indycar engines as well. McLaren's total staffing is thus probably around the same as Ferrari. If you add Williams's 240 to the 125 at Renault Sport the total is still a long way short of Ferrari's total F1 staff.
The problem with such large organizations - and something which has always handicapped Ferrari's efforts to be successful on many occasions - is the tendency for large corporations to be divided by bickering between departments when things are not going well. There has long been tension, for example, between Ferrari's Design & Development facility in England and the engineering departments in Italy. Both sides reckon that they can do the job better than the other and the overall result has suffered as a result.
The fact that Jean Todt is now ending Ferrari's involvement with FDD suggests that this has been a problem. As a result Ferrari will need to do more recruiting to replace the 50 people currently working with John Barnard at FDD. To date Barnard has only lost one member of his staff to Maranello. This means that the demand for good people in F1 is more intense than ever before as all the big teams are growing at a constant rate with the smaller teams recruiting frantically as they try to catch up.
Chairman: Luca di Montezemolo
Sporting director: Jean Todt
Technical director: Ross Brawn
Chief designer: Rory Byrne
FDD: John Barnard (50) *
Engine design: Paolo Martinelli
Drawing office manager: Aldo Costa
Research & Development: Gustav Brunner
Aerodynamics: Wilhem Toet
Electronics: Roberto Dalla
Chief engineer: Giorgio Ascanelli
Race engineers: Ignazio Lunetta, Luca Balderisseri
Team Manager: Stefano Domenicali
Team Coordinator: Nigel Stepney
Press Officer: Claudio Berro
Administration: Fausto Cappi
Production Manager: Marco Almondo
Employees: 450
Test driver: Gianni Morbidelli
Test team: Luigi Mazzola
Windtunnel: Ferrari (Maranello 66% - under construction)
Ferrari (Maranello 30%)
British Aerospace (Bristol 50%)
Related companies: Oral Engineering (which rebuilds engines), Ferrari Design & Development*
* Shortly splitting with Ferrari
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Mild Seven Benetton Renault (I)
Enstone, England
Benetton Formula has been growing steadily since Tom Walkinshaw moved the team into the purpose-built Whiteways Technical Centre at Enstone in October 1992. The 85,000 sq ft facility currently houses the team's 240 staff (up from 190 in 1994) and there will soon be even more space available when the team's full-scale rolling-road windtunnel is completed. This is scheduled to be finished in April but is unlikely to be running before the late summer. This will be the first 100% rolling-road windtunnel in use in Grand Prix racing.
Benetton has suffered in recent months from the lack of success in 1996 and has lost a number of engineers to rival teams but the arrival of Nick Wirth as chief designer has also seen the hiring of new engineers and others are expected to join in the months ahead as Wirth and the new technical director Pat Symmonds begin to exert their influence on the team which was previously led by Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne. There are likely to be attempts by Brawn and Byrne (now together at Ferrari) to hire some of the key engineers at Enstone, as F1 engineering teams tend to stick together. The only problem for Ferrari - which needs to replace the 50 staff it is going to lose with the disappearance of FDD - is that a lot of Benetton engineers are very happy where they are and do not want to move to Italy. It will thus take more financial persuasion to get them to agree.
The construction of a full-scale windtunnel is a sign of the new investment going into technical departments at Benetton - notably in computer simulation software and CAD-CAM networking systems. The new windtunnel is also expected to be fitted with the state-of-the-art laser technology used to such good effect by the aerodynamicists at Williams.
This came about after the team realized that its success in 1994 and 1995 was due largely to Michael Schumacher and to good fortune (Michael Schumacher is unlikely to have won the 1994 title if Ayrton Senna had lived) than to having reached parity technical with Williams.
Chairman: Alessandro Benetton
Managing director: Flavio Briatore
Technical director: Pat Symmonds
Chief designer: Nick Wirth
Drawing office manager: Graham Heard
Composite design: Andy Moss
Transmission design: Dave Wass
Stress analysis: Andy Wyman
Mechanical design: Martin Tolliday
Chief Aerodynamicist: James Allison
Electronics: Tad Czapski
Race engineers: Nick Wirth, Christian Silk, Rod Nelson
Chief mechanic: Mick Ainsley-Cowlishaw
Operations Manager: Joan Villadelprat
Marketing: John Postlethethwaite
Team coordinator: Greg Field
Media Manager: Patrizia Spinelli
Sponsor liaison: Rossella Panseri
Test team: Tim Wright
Test driver: Alexander Wurz
Employees: 240
Windtunnel: Benetton (Enstone, 100%, under construction)
Defence Research Agency (Farnborough, 40%)
Fondmetal Technologies (Casumaro, 40%)
Related companies: Fondmetal Technologies
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West McLaren Mercedes (GB)
Woking, England
McLaren's lack of success in recent years - the 1997 Australian Grand Prix will be the team's 50th race without a victory - is something of a mystery in F1 circles as the team has always enjoyed enormous financial backing and has employed more people than all the F1 teams except Ferrari. The team management now appears to be realising that it has dropped behind the others in terms of chassis technology. This explains the recent attempts to hire Williams's chief designer Adrian Newey and the decision to begin windtunnel programmes with British Aerospace and ultimately to build two brand new windtunnels at the team's new headquarters at Fairoaks when - and if - it is built.
The team has lost quite a few members of staff in recent months because of the disappointing results over the last couple of years with ambitious young engineers such as Gary Savage and Chris Cooney moving to Arrows and Tyrrell respectively. Others have joined Stewart.
As and when Newey joins the team there are likely to be changes in personnel as Newey knows the best engineers at Williams and will undoubtedly try to attract as many of them as possible to McLaren. This will mean that there will be more technical upheavals in the next 18 months. This is no bad thing as the current team is obviously not good enough - for whatever reason - to beat Williams.
One area where McLaren is extremely strong is in its production standards and work methods. These are the most advanced in F1 and mean that the team is able to develop the cars and produce new parts during a season when the pressure is on. It means that the team tends to get better as other less well-funded operations fade during an F1 season. This is a direct result of having a large and highly-skilled staff.
Managing director: Ron Dennis
Financial director: Bob Ilman
Commercial director: Ekrom Sami
Operations director: Martin Whitmarsh
Chief designer: Neil Oatley
Chassis design: Matthew Jeffreys
Transmission design: David North
Suspension design: David Neilson
Engine installation design: Mark Ingham
Head of Aerodynamics: Henri Durand
Head of Research & Development: Paddy Lowe
Special projects: Tyler Alexander
Head of Vehicle Engineering: Steve Nichols
Race engineers: Steve Hallam, Pat Fry
Chief mechanic: Paul Simpson
Head of Systems Engineering: Dieter Gundel
Production manager: Geoff Highley
Team manager: Davey Ryan
Team coordinator: Jo Ramirez
Press Officer: Anna Guerrier
Test Team: YES
Employees: 275
Windtunnel: National Physical Laboratory (Teddington, 40%)
British Aerospace, (Warton, 40%)
Related companies: McLaren Cars; TAG/McLaren Group, TAG Electronics, TAG/McLaren Marketing
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Benson & Hedges Total Jordan Peugeot (GB)
Silverstone, England
The arrival of substantial sponsorship from Benson & Hedges was largely responsible for the tremendous growth which Jordan Grand Prix has undergone in recent months. Money became available for investment and recruiting and as a result the team's factory was extended and important new machinery was acquired. This allowed departments to be expanded and new departments established. This graphically illustrated in the team's drawing office which started the 1996 season with a staff of eight and ended it with 20 people working on the team's CAD design terminals. There was similar growth in the Jordan aerodynamics programme. At the start of the year there was just one aerodynamicist working with technical director Gary Anderson in the Southampton University 30% windtunnel but by the end of the year Jordan had bought its own 40% rolling road windtunnel in Brackley - just a few miles from the factory and the aerodynamics department had grown to five.
The team has also set up a department to explore computational fluid dynamics, which has been available to bigger teams for some years.
When F1 historians look back at 1996 they will probably deduce that this was the year in which Jordan went from being a small racing team to becoming an industrial company. That growth should be reflected in the team's performances in 1997.
As part of the restructuring there have been major changes in the management structure of the team under General Manager Trevor Foster which have enabled technical director Gary Anderson to spend more time worrying about the design of the cars and less time trying to sort out how to balance budgets and get everything built on time.
Jordan's growing process is still continuing with plans for the team to build its own chassis at Silverstone rather than having to rely on Advanced Composites as has been the case up to now.
Managing director: Eddie Jordan
Technical director: Gary Anderson
Research & development: Paul Thompson/Sam Michaels
Windtunnel: John Davis
Chief aerodynamicist: Seamus Mullarkey (5)
Drawing office manager: Paul Crooks (20 design engineers)
Transmission design: Ian Hall
Composite design: John McQuilliam
Hydraulic design: Tim Gulland
Electonics: Andy Leitch
Commercial & Marketing director: Ian Phillips
General manager: Trevor Foster
Race engineers: Andrew Tilley, Andrew Green
Test team engineer: Tim Holloway
Chief mechanic: Tim Edwards
Team Manager: Jim Vale (who oversees test team as well)
Factory manager: Adrian Rowlands
Press officer: Giselle Davies
Employees: 125
Windtunnel: Southampton University (30%)
Jordan (Brackley 40% - currently being refurbished)
Test team: YES
Related companies: Advanced Composites (which builds Jordan chassis)
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Prost Grand Prix (F)
Magny-Cours, France
The announcement that Alain Prost has bought the Ligier team should guarantee the future of France's only Formula 1 operation and it is likely that there will be major expansion of the team within a few months.
Running racing teams in France is vastly more expensive than in England because of France's convoluted employment laws. This means that to employ 100 people in France costs the same as employing 200 in England. This was something which the team's engineering director Tom Walkinshaw discovered in 1995 which led him to move a lot of the design and construction to England. As a result in January 1996 37 of Ligier's 110 French staff were fired. At the time it was the sensible thing to do but within two months Walkinshaw had realized that he was never going to win control of the team - which is what he had planned - and pulled out of Ligier, taking around 20 of the remaining staff with him to Arrows, which he bought soon afterwards. Those left at Magny-Cours each had to do several jobs at the same time but because most of the crew have worked together for so many years a great deal was achieved despite the low staffing levels. That will only work for a limited period of time as individuals are unable to keep up the same pace for months on end.
Ligier was greatly helped by Olivier Panis's dramatic, and totally unexpected, victory at Monaco. It came at exactly the right moment. Mugen Honda agreed to supply engines for 1997 - Tom Walkinshaw had wanted the engine deal for Arrows - and the team got a much-needed boost for morale. The lack of money was, however, frustrating and at the end of the year technical director Andre de Cortanze departed. The staffing levels did increase with 90 people employed at the end of the year.
The arrival of Alain Prost will see the team grow dramatically in the next few months. Prost has already told staff at Magny-Cours that he intends to increase the size of the test team. Prost is expected to conclude a deal for John Barnard to design the team's 1998 car and Barnard's 50 staff at FDD will bounce Ligier up to around 150 employees.
Chairman: Alain Prost
Sporting manager: Cesare Fiorio
Managing director/finance/marketing: Bruno Michel
Production Manager: Didier Perrin
Chief designer & R&D: Loic Bigois
Race engineers: Paolo Catone, Humphrey Corbett, Renato Moscati
Chief mechanic: Robert Dassaud
Future Projects: George Ryton
Drawing Office Manager: Claude Delbet
Telemetry: Loic David
Suspension design: Damien Py
Team manager: Eric Vuillemin
Press Officer: Chris Williams
Purchasing: Philippe Jacquet
Windtunnel: Ligier (Magny-Cours, 40%)
Employees: 92
Test team manager: Jean-Pierre Chatenay
Related companies: Ligier Air Jet (windtunnel)
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Red Bull Sauber Petronas (CH)
Hinwil, Switzerland
Sauber has been growing at a rate of 10 employees a year since it first entered F1 in 1992. Then it had 80 members of staff and a vast new purpose-built factory at Hinwil which had been financed by Mercedes-Benz. In the early years in F1 there was plenty of space at Hinwil with Sauber using certain areas to store his old racing machinery but gradually the working departments are taking over the factory. The staff has climbed to around 125 but is about to leap forward dramatically as its subsidiary Sauber Petronas Engineering embarks on a programme to build its own Formula 1 engines. At the moment Osamu Goto, the Japanese engineer in charge of the engine programme, is using what amount to last year's Ferrari V10 engines but he is busy recruiting experienced F1 engine men and by next year will be doing his own developments on the Ferrari engines. By 1999 Sauber Petronas Engineering should be ready to produce its own V10s and will probably be employing around 100 staff.
Sauber uses a lot of local labour - the mechanics are almost all Swiss nationals many of whom have worked with Sauber since the team's successful days in sportscar racing - but, in order to build the best possible racing team, has had to look beyond Switzerland. It has a very international group of engineers, including a small clan of Englishmen who work in the company's composite and aerodynamics departments; Germans, French and even Dutch. This is not easy as Switzerland is not a member of the European Community and so all foreign workers have to be issued with all the necessary work permits and the team has to prove that the work could not be done by a Swiss national. Keeping foreign staff is also a problem as many British engineers find it very difficult to live in Switzerland, particularly during the cold wintry months.
The team is fortunate to have financial stability thanks to long-term investment from Red Bull and from Malaysian oil company Petronas.
Team principal: Peter Sauber
Team director: Max Welti
Chief designer: Leo Ress
Composite design: Ian Thomson
Aerodynamicists: Rene Hilorst/Mike Jennings
Race engineers: Gilles Alegoet, Willy Rampf
Chief mechanic: Ernst Keller
Engine department (technical): Osamu Goto
Engine department (commercial): Jost Capito
Team manager: Beat Zehnder
Commercial & Marketing: Fritz Kaiser
Press Officer: Gustav Busing
Test Team: Walter Naher
Test driver: Norberto Fontana
Windtunnel: Schweizerische Flugzeugwerke (Emmen, 50%)
Employees: 126
Related companies: Sauber Petronas Engineering
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Tyrrell (GB)
Ockham, England
When Jean Alesi shocked the F1 world with his fine performances in the Tyrrell 019 in 1990 Tyrrell employed just 65 people. The success that season enabled the team to invest in a new purpose-built factory, which was opened in 1991. By 1993 the team had grown to 90 people and the following year passed the 100-mark following Harvey Postlethwaite's return from Ferrari to lead the Tyrrell technical team once again.
Much has changed since then with a younger generation of engineers coming to the fore, although some of the older and more experienced men remain to provide the necessary balance.
Much of the new blood has been due to the influence of Mike Gascoyne, who has recruited a series of engineers with whom he worked at nearby McLaren in the late 1980s and who - like Gascoyne - prefer the dynamic working atmosphere at Tyrrell more than the much larger "corporate" structure at McLaren.
Postlethwaite and Gascoyne have also introduced a policy of sponsoring a lot of university doctorate programmes, notably at England's most famous universities Oxford and Cambridge. This has resulted in a stream of student engineers working with the team on short term contracts - three or six months - and on average one graduate engineers is taken on to the engineering team every year.
The team has introduced a completely new production technique under the control of former race engineer Simon Barker and this has raised the team's capacity to produce more parts faster than before. This means that the team can make progress during a season even if testing possibilities are limited.
Growth and new investment, however, depend on good results and in recent years with Yamaha this has been difficult and frustrating. This year they hope that a reliable package will give better results which will generate more income and thus build up the team.
Chairman: Ken Tyrrell
Managing-director - Commercial: Bob Tyrrell
Managing-director - Engineering: Harvey Postlethwaite
Financial director: George Koopman
Commercial director: Rupert Manwaring
Sporting director: Satoru Nakajima
Deputy Technical Director: Mike Gascoyne (15 designers)
Electronics: Chris White
Suspension design: Chris Cooney
Transmission design: Gary Thomas
Composites design: Nigel Leaper
Chief mechanic: Nigel Steer
Aerodynamics: Mike Gascoyne
Race Engineer (Salo): David Brown
Race Engineer (Verstappen): Tim Densham
Team Manager: Steve Nielsen
Production Manager: Simon Barker
Factory Manager: Neil Davies
Press liaison: Ben
Employees: 115
Test team: No
Test driver: Toranosuke Takagi
Windtunnel: Mitchell windtunnel (40%, Southampton University)
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Minardi Team (I)
Faenza, Italy
Minardi has always had the problem of being Italy's second Formula 1 team and in recent years, as Ferrari has grown, the Maranello empire has tended to grab any good engineers who have been employed by Minardi. Gustav Brunner was snapped up by Ferrari after just one season with the Faenza team, while the team's technical director between 1988-1995 Aldo Costa is now head of the drawing office in Maranello. Other talented engineers such as Briton Nigel Cowperthwaite and Dutch aerodynamicist Rene Hilorst have been poached by other teams.
In the old days Minardi would hire people who had left Ferrari but these are rare nowadays. Trying to build up the Minardi team has been very difficult because there has never been enough sponsorship to invest and recruit and debts have gradually grown. This has meant that in terms of numbers the team has not actually expanded very much in the 1990s. It began the decade with 60 employees and today that figure has only climbed to 70.In December Giancarlo Minardi announced a restructuring of the shareholdings in the team with Flavio Briatore and others (including Sandro Nannini and Gabriele Rumi) taking 70% of the team's holding company. The money invested seems to have been used to pay off the team's debts, which have been a problem in recent years. The involvement of Rumi in the project would seem to suggest that once Benetton has its new 100% windtunnel up and running, Minardi will be able to use the Casumaro windtunnel a great deal more, with Fondmetal Technologies technical director Jean-Claude Migeot helping out.
It is the intention of Briatore and his partners to build the team up with more investment and further recruitment but it is still going to be very difficult to stop Ferrari and others picking up the talented engineers who do emerge at Faenza.
Chairman (holding company): Flavio Briatore
Chairman/managing director: Giancarlo Minardi
Deputy chairman: Gabriele Rumi
Advisor: Nando Minardi
Financial director: Stefano Sangiorgi
Commercial director: Federico Gaetano
Technical Coordinator: Gabriele Tredozi
Drawing Office Manager: Mauro Gennari (8 design engineers)
Chief Aerodynamicist: Mariano Alperin (2 aerodynamicists)
Race engineer: Gabriele Dellicolli, Marco Calovolo
Research & Development: Paolo Marabini
Telemetry: Alessandro Iacoponi
Production: Bruno Fagnocchi
Team manager: Frederic Dhainaut
Chief mechanic: Gabriele Pagliarini
Operations manager: Domenico Sangiorgi
Press Officer: Renato Capucci
Employees: 70
Windtunnel: Fondmetal Technologies (Casumaro, 40%)
Test driver: Tarso Marques
Test team: NO
Related companies: Fondmetal Technologies
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Stewart-Ford (GB)
Milton Keynes, England
Jackie and Paul Stewart have been very fortunate to have been able to set up a completely new Formula 1 operation with the help of the Ford Motor Company to give the new company financial and technical support.
With such a package it was easier to convince good engineers - such as Williams aerodynamicist Egbahl Hamidy - to join the operation. A clever decision to use the Swift Racing Cars windtunnel in San Clemente, California, meant that Hamidy was able to work in the same windtunnel as he had with Williams.
The team's staff has grown at a rate of two per week in the last 12 months and is now at around 100 employees. For most of the year team manager David Stubbs has been able to do little else except interview potential new recruits for Stewart Grand Prix.
The team was also fortunate that it was founded at a time when Williams was dominating - because that meant that there were a lot of disgruntled people in the other teams who were looking a change. As the team has grown the team has been able to expand into industrial units next door to the original Paul Stewart Racing factory in Milton Keynes. The aim is for the entire operation to move into a purpose-built factory somewhere in Milton Keynes within the next 18 months but until then the team has to continue to work in the rather makeshift situation in which it finds itself.
The relationship with Ford has been vital to help the team master some of the new technologies being used by other F1 teams, such as computational fluid dynamics. Ford engineers at the Advanced Engineering Center in Dearborn, Michigan and at Dunton in England have all been involved to help Stewart and so the actual number of engineers employed on the Stewart F1 project is higher than the 100 staff the team now admits to.
Chairman: Jackie Stewart
Managing director: Paul Stewart
Technical director: Alan Jenkins
Chief designer: Dave Amey (10)
Electronics: Mike Williams
Suspension design: Dave Rendall
Transmission design: Andy Le Fleming
Composite design: Richard McAinsh (6)
Aerodynamics: Egbahl Hamidy (4)
Commercial director: Rob Armstrong
Financial director: Nigel Betts
Engineering Manager: Colin McGrory
Race Team Manager: David Stubbs
Race engineers: Jean-Francois Sinteff, Malcolm Tierney
Chief mechanic: Dave Redding
Technical team manager: Andy Miller
Press Officer: Stuart Sykes
Employees: 100
Windtunnel: Swift Racing Cars (San Clemente, California, 50%)
Test team: NO
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Mastercard Lola F1 Team (GB)
Huntingdon, England
The Mastercard Lola team may be new to Grand Prix racing but it has already adopted a policy of not revealing the names of its engineering staff to avoid other teams picking up the talented youngster. Lola has been a target for poaching good engineers dating back to the days when Patrick Head and John Barnard worked for Eric Broadley when they were unknown designers. More recent examples have been Chris Murphy (poached by Leyton House) and Jock Clear (now with Williams).
All the team will admit to is that Broadley is heading the design team. Internal sources within Lola say that, in fact, many of the engineers involved are working on both the Indycar and the F1 projects and thus it can be surmised that some of the work will be have overseen by the company's senior designers John Travis and Keith Knott. What is clear is that the company has not recruited any design staff from other F1 teams specifically to design the F1 car.
Lola's recruitment for the F1 project amounts to only about 40 people. Fifteen have been taken on to help in the manufacturing departments and around 30 have been hired as part of the F1 racing team. All the other necessary design, aerodynamic research, machining, quality-control, manufacturing and assembly has been done by existing Lola engineers. The composite work has been done by Lola's subsidiary Lola Composites Ltd - which has a staff of 100 and two large autoclaves.
The major players in the project, therefore, are existing Lola management figures such as the company's director of engineering resources Roger Tyler, the operations director Tony Woods and production manager Laurie Bray. Lola is establishing its own engine company and will build V10 engines designed by Al Melling.
Managing director: Eric Broadley
Financial director: Chris Reeder
Chief designer: Eric Broadley (8)
Senior designers: John Travis/Keith Knott
Commercial director: Stephen Taylor
Marketing director: Brett Trafford
Director of engineering resources: Roger Tyler
Operations director: Tony Woods
Production manager: Laurie Bray
Team manager: Ray Boulter
Operations manager: Alan Harrison
Chief mechanic: Dave Luckett
Media manager: Stuart McCrudden
Employees: Lola Group 235
Windtunnel: Lola Cars (Huntingdon, 50%) under construction
Cranfield Institute of Technology (40%)
Test team: No
Related Companies: Lola Cars Ltd, Lola Composites Ltd,