MARCH 2, 2002
Hamidy leaving Jordan!
Egbhal Hamidy, the technical director of Jordan Grand Prix, is currently "on holiday" and that is bad news for the Iranian-born engineer - because at Jordan when the technical director does not make it to the first race to see how his new car is doing, the relationship is clearly over.
Hamidy will now have to go through a period of six months "gardening leave" before he can go and work elsewhere. It remains to be seen who will replace Hamidy but the logical step would be for Jordan to hand the position over to Anderson, although the Ulsterman said when he rejoined the team that he was not interested in the role. There have been rumors that Renault's Pat Symmonds could be the man to take over but although he has told the Enstone team that he is leaving, he is not going to leave before October, when his contract runs out. And that means that he will be no use to Jordan for the 2003 car.
Jordan has the additional problem that its head of aerodynamics has just left the team to take on the same role at Renault, following in the footsteps of a string of other engineers who have been recruited by Renault since it hired Mike Gascoyne as its technical director.
As for Hamidy, the word on the street is that the 41-year-old could be on the McLaren shopping list. He worked with Adrian Newey with considerable success at Williams in the early 1990s. Eventually he was poached by Stewart Grand Prix but he has never really been settled since then and none of the cars he has produced have really lived up to expectations. He joined Jordan only a year ago after 18 months at Arrows.