FEBRUARY 19, 1996

Stewart begins recruiting

STEWART GRAND PRIX has begun recruiting design engineers for its 1997 Formula 1 project. Jackie Stewart's team announced in January that it had a technical director - Alan Jenkins will be revealed to be that man as soon as he has left Arrows at the end of February.

Stewart has now hired a couple of Benetton engineers: notably Dave Rendall. The moves have worried the Benetton management sufficiently that they are now insisting that everyone in the drawing office at Enstone sign new three year contracts with a 5% increase in salary. It remains to be seen whether these will actually be signed.

Paul Stewart, managing director of Stewart Grand Prix, refuses to comment on any hirings.

"We've had a lot of interesting people who have applied," he says. "So we're in a good position."

The team is hard at work preparing for the new project with the old truck bay at the team's Milton Keynes factory currently being converted into a design office and prototype assembly area. The team has also taken over the industrial unit next door and will expand into that.

Stewart says that the team will be run by Paul Stewart Racing's F3000 team manager David Stubbs (who was Williams team manager in the mid 1980s), and that PSR's F3 team manager Andy Miller will be Technical Team Manager - his chief task being to liaise with the Ford Motor Company and Cosworth.