Rob Smedley

The Man that keeps Felipe Massa calm in the Ferrari Car.

Rob Smedley was Born in Middlesbrough in 1973 and grow up in the Normanby area of the town.

Smedley started his Motorsport's career by been a suspension design engineer for the Peugeot Touring car team in 1997. He then went on to work in the F3000 series and the Williams Touring Car team, before ending up at Jordan F1 racing team until 2003.

After 2003 Smedley moved to the Scuderia Ferrari team and half way between 2006 he took over as Felipe Massa's race engineer and has been in the same role for the past 6 years.

Smedley is now well famous around the world for his radio message to Felipe Massa in Malaysia 2009 by telling him to stay cool baby. Smedley also was behind the whole message to tell Felipe Massa to move aside in 2010 in German GP, which you can tell he wasn't pleased about.

But for me his relationship with Felipe Massa is one of the best Driver/Race Engineer combinations i've ever seen and these two are mates off the track aswell.

As somebody who has been brought up on Teesside Rob Smedley gives the rest of us hope that we can follow our dreams. So it makes me proud to be from Teesside.

Your thoughts on Rob please?
 
Where would Massa be without a puppet master? Although we are led to believe that Rob will not be 'chatting' during races.
 
There's absolutely nothing new about race engineers and their drivers moving to a different team together. The list is endless, and it's no coincidence.
The relationship between race-engineer and drivers is a very close one and it's an advantage for any team to recruit staffl who don't need any sort of acclimatisation period with one another.
I don't know why it should be viewed any more jokingly in the case of Massa and Smedley than in previous partnerships.
Rob probably had no idea what he started with his "Felipe-baby" quip...
 
Rob Smedley starts work for Williams F1 team at Bahrain Grand Prix
By Edd StrawWednesday, April 2nd 2014, 10:45 GMT
Rob Smedley will start work for the Williams Formula 1 team at this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Smedley, who worked as Felipe Massa's race engineer at Ferrari from 2006-13, has taken up the role of head of vehicle performance at Williams and is travelling to Bahrain this week after officially starting his new role on Monday.

He will be running the pitwall on race weekends and will be the senior engineer at the track working under chief technical officer Pat Symonds.

That role has been filled by chief test and support engineer Rod Nelson so far this season....
 
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