FEBRUARY 24, 1997

Tino Belli joins Arrows

TINO BELLI has been appointed head of research & development with Tom Walkinshaw's Arrows Grand Prix operation.

TINO BELLI has been appointed head of research & development with Tom Walkinshaw's Arrows Grand Prix operation. The 35-year-old Welshman has been involved in motor racing since 1984 when Robin Herd recruited him to be senior aerodynamicist at March Engineering. He worked as Michael Andretti's race engineer with Kraco in 1987 and 1988 and then became chief development engineer of the Porsche Indycar program. In 1990 he became chief engineer and managing-director of Fomet 1 - Herd's post-March design bureau. Belli designed the Fomet 1 of 1991 but at the end of the year the operation began a relationship with Larrousse which continued until the French team closed down at the start of 1995.

Belli then worked with the Forsythe Indycar team and last year raced engineered Raul Boesel with the Brahma-sponsored Team Green.

As head of R&D at Arrows he will be working with Japanese engineer Taku Takamura, an old accomplice from Fomet 1 days, with McLaren refugee Gary Savage and with ex-Lotus and Ligier engineer Steve Clark.

There are expected to be further changes in the technical staff at Arrows as the season progresses and rumors persist that the team is looking for a new technical director to replace Frank Dernie. We hear that top of the list for the job is GustavÊBrunner, who finishes a four-year contract with Ferrari at the end of July. Brunner has spent much of his career working in England but he is understood to have had an offer from Sauber to become technical director of the Swiss team.

With all the top F1 teams growing fast at the moment, there is much demand for experienced engineers. The teams are so desperate in fact that there has been a lot of pillaging of engineers from Formula 3000, sportscars and Indycars. More is expected in the months ahead.