AUGUST 16, 1999

..and shuffles engineers

ARROWS will announce this week that it is reshuffling its technical staff with Mike Coughlan being promoted to the role of technical director and Egbahl Hamidy being drafted in as chief designer.

ARROWS will announce this week that it is reshuffling its technical staff with Mike Coughlan being promoted to the role of technical director and Egbahl Hamidy being drafted in as chief designer. The 39-year-old Iranian-born British engineer worked in the aviation industry before studying vehicle dynamics for a doctorate at Imperial College, London. This meant he worked in the Honda windtunnel at Imperial and through this experience had his first contact with F1. He was recruited by Williams which was using the tunnel at the time and he then spent eight years working with Williams designers EnriqueÊScalabroni and Adrian Newey, under the technical guidance of Patrick Head. When Stewart Grand Prix was formed Hamidy was approached and asked if he would like to join the fledgling operation, a challenge he accepted and he joined the team early in 1996, working mainly at the Swift windtunnel in San Clemente, California. He left the team at the end of last season, soon after Gary Anderson took over as technical director.

He has talked to several teams since then but to date has not agreed any deal. The signing will be a boost for the Arrows team which has not had a topline aerodynamicist in recent years.

The team will also announce that Dan Parry-Williams has been appointed head of research and development. Parry-Williams comes from the TWR automotive consultancy business and has worked in recent years on the Aston Martin Vantage project, the Volvo C70 and the Jaguar XJ220.