Lotus beef up technical team

[FB]

Mike Gascoyne has sent a raiding party to Force India and stolen recruited 3 of their senior technical team:

Mark Smith will take over as the team's technical director, Lewis Butler joins as chief designer and Marianne Hinson will be head of aerodynamics.

Force India have made reasonable progress over the last few years so this will probably be good for Lotus but could have a detrimental effect on FI. FI are also a bit angry about Lotus, or should I say the design companies they use, using some of their design data whilst working on the T127. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8718856.stm

 

[Muddytalker]

Makes sense, considering Lotus are allegedly using a FI-designed car...

 

[Brogan]

It will be interesting to see how this works out for both teams.

As we now know, it was FI designers who were responsible for the DD last year so they've obviously got some good ideas coming out of there and FI have made decent inroads into the midfield in the last few years.

Mike Gascoyne by all account isn't the easiest of people to work for but either he can't be that bad or they've offered pretty good packages as plenty of people are willing to follow him from team to team.

Let's just hope the FI guys don't take any of the IP with them...

 

[cider_and_toast]

Let's just hope the FI guys don't take any of the IP with them...

Apparently in the wake of "Spygate" they now have to undergo some sort of Men In Black style mind zap before leaving their posts to ensure no knowledge is taken from one team to another.

If you read the excellent biography of Tony Rudd called "It was fun" he left BRM to join Lotus and took all the data that he had been looking at on underbody aerodynamics with him. This was the genesis of the Lotus 78.

It's been going on for years.

Having read the statement on the Lotus website about the newbies, most of them have worked with MG before, either during his spell at FI or further back when he was at Lotus.

I hope it doesn't lead to a downturn in performance for Force India to be honest because they have made excellent progress in the last couple of years and it's always refreshing to see teams come on and push the big names for some points.

 

[teabagyokel]

IP moves when the intellect involved moves!

 

[Brogan]

IP moves when the intellect involved moves!

Precisely!
Hence my

Transfer of IP happens in every walk of life whenever one employee moves from one company to another.

 

[teabagyokel]

I think, personally, I'm possibly about to head into dangerous waters "Spygate rant" wise. If a Spygate rant should appear in this thread, I apologise as I have already raked over that several times, and my opinions are well documented.

 

[slickskid]

Would it be prudent at this stage to remind everyone that until recently FI had some help from Mc with the odd engineer on loan so as to speak